NewsWrap for the week ending May 3rd, 1997 (As broadcast on THIS WAY OUT Program #475, distributed 05-05-97) [Compiled & written by Cindy Friedman, with thanks to Brian Nunes, Graham Underhill, Jason Lin, Martin Rice, Bill Wood, Doug Case, Rex Wockner, David Cook, Lucia Chappelle and Greg Gordon; and anchored by Cindy Friedman and Brian Nunes.] Tasmanian gays and lesbians this week celebrated repeal of Australia's last sodomy law after a hard-fought 9-year campaign. Although a few formalities remain, the last real hurdle was passed May 1st as the Legislative Council, the upper house of the state parliament, approved the same measure already passed by the lower house, the House of Assembly, with no amendments attached. The preceding two weeks were spent in hot debate of a series of anti-gay amendments, and the final triumph of repeal resulted from one opposing Legislative Council member's resignation for entirely unrelated reasons. Rodney Croome of the Tasmanian Gay & Lesbian Rights Group says the reform has taken Tasmania's laws on gay and lesbian activity from being the nation's worst to being its best. The key to turning around the state government, from years of staunchly defending its harsh historic law to actually supporting reform, was a lawsuit before Australia's High Court that the Tasmanian government recognized it could not win. The state government is settling the case and has agreed to pay A$20,000 towards the legal costs incurred by Tasmanian Gay & Lesbian Rights Group members Rodney Croome and Nick Toonen. Australian gay and lesbian activists are now turning their sights to the state of West Australia's unequal age of consent laws. British gays and lesbians are more than pleased with the results of this week's national election, a Labour landslide that ended 18 years of Conservative rule. Labour actively courted the pink vote during the campaign, with promises of workplace discrimination protections, an end to the ban on military service by open gays and lesbians, another attempt to make the age of consent for gay sex equal to the age for heterosexual acts, and repeal of Clause 28, a law prohibiting public support of so-called "promotion" of homosexuality. Four openly gay Labour candidates won seats in the House of Commons. Incumbent Member of Parliament Chris Smith retained his seat by a landslide and is very likely to be named as Minister of Health in Labour leader Tony Blair's new cabinet. Incumbent Member of Parliament Gordon Marsden retained his seat by a comfortable margin. Stephen Twigg astonished everyone with a narrow upset victory over the Conservatives' powerful Minister of Defense Michael Portillo. Ben Bradshaw, who was the first candidate ever to be openly gay before seeking his first nomination, trounced a blantantly homophobic, gay-baiting Conservative candidate from the religious right to give Labour a seat the Tories had held since 1970. But openly gay Conservative incumbent Member of Parliament Michael Brown was soundly defeated, as were openly gay Liberal Democratic candidate Alex Willcock and openly lesbian Labour candidate Katie Hanson. Also going down to defeat was Conservative Member of Parliament Jerry Hayes, who was the subject of scandal this year when his former aide claimed the two had had an affair years ago -- allegations which Hayes denied. France has its first openly gay candidate for the National Assembly in Pierre Gandonniere, who's running in Lyon for the Green Party. He says he'll use his candidacy as a platform to speak out on lesbian and gay issues as well as his party's environmental agenda. Although the Greens have not been much of a political force in French politics to date, Gandonniere's chances of election are improved by a new coalition agreement between the Greens and the Socialist party. Gandonniere hopes to inspire other lesbian and gay candidates to come out -- he estimates there are about 40 closeted candidates running. In the Philippines, Senate President Pro Tem Blas Ople this week called for review of current election laws which prevent gays and lesbians from being represented as a group in the national parliament. A dozen other so-called "sectors" are already represented, including indigenous peoples, people with disabilities, youth, and the elderly, as well as occupational categories. Ople noted what he called "the obvious dislike of the Ramos administration for gay people" and condemned the administration for "tolerating gay-bashing in the military." Last week, the Philippines' Armed Forces Chief of Staff, General Arnulfo Acedera, said that although women would be allowed to serve, in his words, "We cannot have in-betweens in the military service." Acedera also said, "I don't know of any gays at present in the service, but if indeed there are, they must be advised to get out." Ople joined gay and lesbian activists in condemning and countering those remarks, and called for lifting the military ban. It's been suggested that last month's mysterious crash of a U.S. Air Force A-10 attack jet on a training mission may have been the suicide of a pilot who feared he would be "outed" as a gay man. A newspaper in Tucson, Arizona, where pilot Captain Craig Button was based, cited anonymous sources close to the investigation as saying Button feared exposure by a former male lover, a revelation that would probably have ended his military career. But Air Force spokespeople say the investigation has only just gotten underway, and called the allegations unsubstantiated, speculative and irresponsible. Although the U.S. military's ban on service by open gays and lesbians has led to many suicides over the years, there's also a tendency for military embarrassments to be wrongly blamed on gays, most notably in the 1989 explosion on the U.S.S. Iowa that killed 46 men. A U.S. Court of Appeals this week issued a strong unanimous decision striking down an Alabama law prohibiting state support of gay and lesbian groups on college campuses. The law had been passed in 1992 in direct response to Auburn University granting official recognition to a gay and lesbian club. Relying on Alabama's sodomy statute, the law prohibited "any college or university from spending public funds or using public facilities...to sanction, recognize, or support any group that promotes a lifestyle or actions prohibited by the sodomy and sexual misconduct laws." The successful challenge was brought by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of the Gay Lesbian and Bisexual Alliance at the state-run University of South Alabama in Mobile. The former partner of a gay health worker was convicted this week of the worst breach of medical confidentiality in U.S. history. A Florida judge ruled that it was undertaker George Wentz who had sent to two newspapers copies of contact information for 4,000 people diagnosed with AIDS, a list compiled under Florida's mandatory reporting law. Wentz' motive was to hurt his former lover and business partner, state health worker William Calvert, who was one of only a handful of people who had access to the confidential list. Calvert testified that Wentz had repeatedly pressured him to be able to use the list of people with AIDS to market the services of their funeral home. For causing considerable distress to thousands of people, Wentz will be punished for his second-degree misdemeanor with no more than 60 days in jail and a $500 fine -- and even so his attorney will appeal what is the state's first conviction under the confidentiality statute. Calvert will also be facing charges that he used his status as a public official for his personal benefit, and if convicted could be sentenced to up to a year in prison. Chevron Corporation this week announced it will become the first major oil company to extend full spousal benefits to its unmarried employees' domestic partners, both same-gender and heterosexual. Chevron is headquartered in San Francisco, where a pioneering new law requires the city's contractors to give domestic partners the same benefits as legally married spouses. The company has more than 26,000 employees in the U.S. In 1993, Chevron became the first major oil company to add "sexual orientation" as a protected category under its equal opportunity and anti-harassment policies. And finally ... as the Hawai'i state legislature ended its session this week, both chambers gave final approval to the two-part compromise on same-gender marriages that had been worked out by a House-Senate conference committee. Governor Ben Cayetano is expected to sign both a landmark domestic partners bill and a measure to place on the November 1998 ballot a constitutional amendment that would authorize the legislature to restrict legal marriage to one man and one woman. It's not yet known if this legislation will have any effect on the gay and lesbian marriage case due to receive its final review from the Hawai'i state Supreme Court next month; that case could potentially grant full marriage rights to same-gender couples before the constitutional amendment goes before the voters. In what will be the first statewide domestic partners registry in the U.S., couples are referred to as "reciprocal beneficiaries", who can be any two unmarried people who live together even if they're blood relatives. Registration will give them 52 assorted marriage-like benefits, and while that's more than any other state has to offer, it's far short of the more than 350 benefits enjoyed by legally married couples in Hawai'i. In a letter to the "Honolulu Advertiser" newspaper, Ken Scott noted that the registration fees for marriage and for reciprocal beneficiaries are exactly the same. He argued that since reciprocal beneficiaries gain only 15% of the rights of married couples, they should only have to pay 15% of the cost of a marriage license ... which comes to $1.19. -----*----- Sources for this week's report included: Academe Today; The Associated Press; The Australian Broadcasting Corp.; BBC Radio 5 Live's "Out This Week"; BBC online; BBC World Service; C-SPAN; The Garden Island (Lihu`e, Kaua`i, Hawai`i); The Honolulu Advertiser; The Honolulu Star-Bulletin; The Age (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia); The Mercury (Hobart, Tasmania, Australia); Ooups! Magazine [ooups@ooups.com]; The British Press Association; Reuters; The St. Petersburg (FL) Times; The San Jose (CA) Mercury News; The Tampa (FL) Tribune; TasOnline; United Press International; and cyberpress releases from the American Civil Liberties Union; Chevron Corporation; The Chevron Lesbian and Gay Employees Association; The Hawai'i Gay Marriage Project; the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission; and the (U.S.) Servicemembers Legal Defense Network.