NewsWrap for the week ending August 23rd, 1997 (As broadcast on THIS WAY OUT Program #491, distributed 08-25-97) [Compiled & written by Cindy Friedman, with thanks to Graham Underhill, Brian Nunes, Jason Lin, Chris Ambidge, Rex Wockner, Lucia Chappelle and Greg Gordon, and anchored by Cindy Friedman and Tory Christopher] In Jamaica, four prisoners are dead in rioting sparked by a plan for condom distribution. Corrections Commissioner John Prescod announced that he was considering distributing condoms to both prisoners and guards to stop the spread of HIV, and both groups were profoundly insulted by what they saw as an implication that they were homosexual. The guards went out on strike this week demanding Prescod's resignation. Left to themselves, prisoners at both the Saint Catherine District Prison in Spanish Town and Kingston's General Penitentiary attacked fellow inmates they believed to be gay. Three of the men assaulted were stabbed to death, and a fourth one died when a row of cells was set afire. A dozen others have been injured. Heavily armed soldiers were sent in to quell the disturbances and police are investigating the deaths. Negotiations with the guards are still underway. [ADDED TO THE BROADCAST RIGHT AFTER "NEWSWRAP":] Updating our lead story in "NewsWrap" this week from Jamaica, where implications of homosexuality through an announced prisonwide condom distribution program led the offended guards to walk out and the inmates to riot ... the guards have now returned to work, with a stipulation against condom distribution in the prisons, but further waves of inmate violence have brought the death toll to 16, all of them men the prisoners believed to be gay. At last count the 4 days of rioting have resulted in 30 additional injuries among the inmates, 8 of them shot by guards. It now appears that authorities have succeeded in restoring order, but we'll have more on this story next week as circumstances warrant. The Australian government gave $200,000 to Western Australia's AIDS Council and Gay & Lesbian Counseling Service to design its first suicide prevention campaign targeting lesbigay youth ... but Family Services Minister Judi Maylan has banned their product, which she says, "has leaned a little bit too much towards the promoting of a gay and lesbian lifestylye" without saying enough about suicide. The groups believe that successful youth suicide prevention must boost self-esteem. The banned designs show same-gender couples kissing, with the headline, "Trust Your Feelings" and the caption "These feelings are a natural and healthy thing, they are one more part of who you are, it's OK to question your sexuality, it's OK to be unsure, and it's OK to take your time finding out. Many young people feel the same, you are not alone." Moylan wants the groups to go back to the drawing board, but they are appealing her decision. Brian Grieg of the Australian Council On Lesbian & Gay Rights said, "She is placing at risk more lives because of her incompetence and prejudice." In Canada, London Mayor Dianne Haskett this week explained to an Ontario Human Rights tribunal why she refused to issue a proclamation of Gay Pride Weekend in 1995 to the group HALO, Homophile Association of London Ontario. In four hours of tearful testimony, she told how her religious beliefs made it impossible for her to support either abortion rights or homosexuality. To stop issuing proclamations altogether or to refer requests for them to the City Council she believed would be damaging to her leadership. Therefore she privately tried to develop a set of personal guidelines she thought would be fair because they excluded proclamations relating to abortion whether pro or con, and those relating to sexuality whether heterosexual, homosexual or celibate. By contrast, the official guidelines for proclamations approved by the City Council deal only with their language and not with their content. Haskett admitted that although she'd been thinking about her policy for over a year and a half, she had never attempted to write it down until after learning that HALO would be requesting the pride proclamation. That was also soon after another human rights tribunal had fined Hamilton Mayor Bob Morrow $5,000 for illegal discrimination for refusing to issue a pride proclamation there. Under cross-examination, Haskett admitted that she would knowingly issue a proclamation for a group that refused to hire gays and lesbians, but not one that similarly discriminated against blacks, women or people with disabilities. She also said she would reject proclamation requests from gay and lesbian groups of educators, elders, people with disabilities, or victims of violence, because all such groups emphasized the sexual aspects of their members' lives. If the adjudicator finds Haskett to have illegally discriminated, HALO hopes to force Haskett to issue their pride proclamation and to change her policy. Another Canadian, Lynn Johnston, this week saw her widely-syndicated comic strip "For Better or For Worse" become controversial with a four-day storyline about a young gay man. In 1993, the character of the boy next door "Lawrence" came out at the age of 17, leading as many as 19 newspapers to drop the strip altogether and as many as 40 to skip the gay storyline. Lawrence has actually appeared in many editions of the strip since, but no notice was taken because he was not discussing his sexual orientation. This time, United Press Syndicate felt it was necessary to give newspapers advance warning that Lawrence would be coping with his boyfriend's move to Paris to study piano and thanking the main characters for their support when he came out. GLAAD, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, noted the irony that "For Better or For Worse" is actually one of the most family-oriented strips available. No outright cancellations have been reported, and although some 30 papers requested past episodes to rerun, even some of them ran the current strip. Given the advance warning, the Christian Family Network geared up for protests, asking their members with newspaper subscriptions to cancel their deliveries for the four days of Lawrence's story. Three conservative groups demonstrated outside two North Carolina newspapers that ran the strip, but both papers continued to run it. But in Timmins, Ontario, where the "Daily Press" in 1993 had received dozens of calls from offended readers, the paper's managing editor said that this time the calls came from people begging for the chance to read the strip. Lost in the hoopla is the bottom line that the recognition of Lawrence's orientation made no difference to something like 98% of the papers. Two public officials in Alberta are trying to defund a gay and lesbian history project at the Red Deer Museum. The museum won a $10,000 grant from the Ministry of Community Development as part of a larger grant to the umbrella Alberta Museums Association, after going through the normal process of review and approval by a panel of experts. The funds have already been disbursed, and it would be unprecedented to withdraw them. But after the grant was featured in a local newspaper, Alberta's provincial treasurer Stockwell Day and member of the Legislative Assembly Victor Doerksen said they received over 50 calls in less than a week in opposition. They said callers either wanted the public money to go to what they feel are more deserving projects, or didn't want to be "confronted" with homosexuality. Day, a former assistant pastor and Christian school administrator didn't want the museum promoting what he called the gay and lesbian "cause". Doerksen felt the project served to legitimize homosexuality. Red Deer Museum Director Wendy Martindale has no intention of returning the funds, and said the opposition only reinforced for her the importance of the project. The funds will hire a researcher to speed work that's already been underway for 3 years, collecting photos, oral history tapes and other materials about gay and lesbian lives and organizing in Alberta. Chicago is ready to flaunt its North Halstead "Boystown" as a center of gay and lesbian activity. 3.2 million dollars have been earmarked for what the Transportation Department calls "streetscaping" in North Halstead. The city's given similar facelifts to some 20 other neighborhoods including "GreekTown" ... but none has been as flamboyant as the plans for North Halstead, which center on a pair of 25-foot-tall flying saucer-like structures bearing rings of light in the colors of the rainbow flag. A series of steel towers will display still more rainbow light rings, and the rainbow flag will hang from light poles for several city blocks. Local merchants support the plan, which also includes planting trees, installing antique-style streetlights, and widening sidewalks to increase foot traffic. Construction is scheduled to begin in early 1998. And finally ... the rainbow colors also turned up to less unanimous acclaim this week in a rather unexpected venue: Pope John Paul II's visit to France to celebrate the 12th annual Festival Of Youth. Jean-Charles Castelbajac was invited to desgin outfits for the Pope, and the 500 bishops and 5,000 priests helping out at the Festival. He's better known for dressing the punk rock groups The Sex Pistols and The New York Dolls, but in this case he may have been thinking of another of his clients, openly-gay singer/songwriter Elton John. His rainbow scheme, like the gay and lesbian rainbow flag, was intended to represent the inhabited continenets of the world ... but while the gay and lesbian symbol has six stripes, Castelbajac slighted Australia by deleting the sixth color, that doubtless too-gay purple. Only the Pope got to wear all 5 colors of the abbreviated rainbow, in the form of crosses stitched by master embroiderer Francois Lesage. The other clergy each had a single color band on their cream-colored robes, to form the rainbow when they assembled. Fashion reporters also noted that John Paul's preferred footwear under his cassocks is Doc Martens boots ... but this has prompted absolutely no speculation that he is a lesbian. ---------*---------- Sources for this week's report included: Associated Press, Austin American-Statesman, The Australian, Charlotte (NC) Observer, London (ONT) Free Press, London Times, Ottawa Citizen, Ottawa Sun, Post-Herald (Birmingham, AL), Press Association (UK), Reuters, The Scotsman, Telegraph (London); and cyberpress releases from the Christian Family Network, and the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation.