NewsWrap
for the week ending July 17, 1999
(As broadcast on This Way Out program #590, distributed 7-19-99)
[Written by Cindy Friedman, with thanks to Graham Underhill, Brian Nunes,
Jason Lin, Martin Rice, Rex Wockner, Chris Ambidge,
Greg Gordon & Lucia Chappelle]

Anchored by Cindy Friedman and Leo Garcia

  With an unusual public "notification" this week, the Vatican announced that 
two leading U.S. educators have been permanently barred from speaking about 
homosexuality.  For almost thirty years, Monsignor Robert Nugent and Sister 
Jeannine Gramick have been trying to help gays and lesbians, their families 
and their congregations to reconcile homosexuality and Catholicism.
They founded the pioneering New Ways Ministry in Maryland, and after the 
Vatican ordered them to disassociate themselves from New Ways, continued to 
travel the country giving workshops.
They also wrote two books, "Building Bridges:  Gay and Lesbian Reality and 
the Catholic Church" and "Voices of Hope:  A Collection of Positive Catholic 
Writing on Gay and Lesbian Issues".
Some U.S. gay Catholic activists actually found Gramick and Nugent too 
conservative for their taste.
But after a 12-year investigation, with the approval of the Pope, Cardinal 
Joseph Ratzinger wrote that his Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith 
"is obliged to declare for the good of the Catholic faithful that the 
positions advanced by Sister Jeannine Gramick and Monsignor Robert Nugent ... 
are doctrinally unacceptable because they do not faithfully convey the clear 
and constant teaching of the Catholic Church"  "regarding the intrinsic evil 
of homosexual acts and the objective disorder of the homosexual inclination." 
In the eyes of the Vatican, Gramick and Nugent apparently were not firm 
enough on "the definitive and unchangeable nature of Catholic doctrine in 
this area" and overemphasized the doctrine that gays and lesbians should be 
treated with "respect, compassion and sensitivity."
President of the U.S. National Conference of Catholic Bishops Joseph Fiorenza 
was quick to underscore that the Vatican's action was due to Gramick and 
Nugent's individual deficiencies and to reaffirm the bishops' commitment to 
ministry to gays and lesbians.
But Charles Cox, executive director of the gay and lesbian Catholic group 
Dignity USA said the Vatican action "sends a very poor message.  Once again 
the church says, 'We love you, we want you to be a part of the church,' and 
then essentially prohibits people from ministering to gay and lesbian 
communities."

  Religion would take precedence over state and local laws, including civil 
rights laws, under a bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives this 
week.  The so-called Religious Liberty Protection Act, RLPA, was approved by 
a margin of almost 3-to-1.  The bill is supported by a wide variety of 
religious groups and some civil rights organizations in the hope that it will 
free religious practice from the restrictions of zoning laws, school dress 
codes, and other bureaucratic burdens.  If it exempted civil rights laws, 
national gay and lesbian organizations and the American Civil Liberties Union 
would support it, too.  But some religious right groups are specifically 
looking to use RLPA as a legal defense against local civil rights laws 
protecting gays and lesbians from discrimination, since there is no federal 
law to protect them.  New York Democratic Congressmember Jerrold Nadler 
proposed an amendment to RLPA to create an exemption for civil rights laws.  
The bill's floor manager, Florida Republican Charles Canady, warned that the 
amendment "would establish as a matter of Congressional policy that religious 
liberty would have second-class status."  That amendment was defeated in 
committee, and defeated again this week on the floor by a vote of 234 - 190.  
President Bill Clinton has said he wants to work on "clarification of civil 
rights protections" but that he strongly supports the bill.  In fact he 
signed a similar bill in 1993 which was later struck down by the Supreme 
Court.  The Religious Liberty Protection Act moves next to the Senate, where 
its fate is unclear; committee hearings there have not yet been scheduled.

  The religious right turned out in force this week to oppose the idea of 
civil rights protections for lesbigays and transgenders in Henderson, 
Kentucky.  There may have been more than 1,000 people present for a meeting 
of the town's Human Rights Commission, more than the auditorium could legally 
hold.  The crowd was organized by the American Family Association of 
Henderson, which formed specifically to oppose the civil rights measure.  In 
what several observers viewed as a tent revival atmosphere, 30 members of 
Henderson' Fairness Campaign elected not to speak at all.  They'd already 
presented their proposal and won the support of a majority of Commissioners 
at a meeting in May.  The 40 people at that session had previously been the 
Human Rights Commission's biggest-ever audience.  The still-to-be-drafted 
bill will be taken up by the Henderson City Commission in August or September.

  The award of 1.5-million-dollars to a gay California Highway Patrol officer 
who was severely harassed by his co-workers, was allowed to stand this week, 
as the state Supreme Court declined to take up an appeal.  The CHP had tried 
to argue that California's 1992 law against discrimination did not apply to 
harassment and that the CHP should not be held responsible for the actions of 
its employees.

  Another high-ticket court award was affirmed this month by the Michigan 
state Court of Appeals.  Pinkerton's has been ordered to ante up the ten 
million dollars a jury awarded Sean McBride because its security guard failed 
to protect him from a gay-bashing that left him paraplegic.  The guard did 
not intervene and even laughed as three men in the lobby of McBride's 
apartment building taunted him with homophobic insults on three occasions 
within hours of the attack.  The fourth time McBride passed through the 
lobby, the three followed him out, beat him, and shot him a half-dozen times. 
 The court wrote that, "the nature of the verbal harassment was both personal 
and offensive, and we do not find it unforeseeable that the verbal harassment 
ultimately escalated to a physical confrontation."

  The threat of a lawsuit helped some New Hampshire students to win the right 
to form an afterschool Gay Straight Alliance club this week.  The question 
was put before the Manchester school board, which was advised by its legal 
counsel that if it denied the club, it would lose the student's federal court 
lawsuit at a cost of $300,000.  Even so, the club was approved by only a 
one-vote margin.  The students have not yet decided to drop their lawsuit, 
filed with the help of Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders, because they 
are also seeking a court order requiring fair treatment and unspecified 
damages.

  Broward County, Florida's new domestic partners registry began this week, 
and on its first day, 70 eager couples began lining up an hour before the 
clerk's office opened.  But when Santa Barbara County, California's registry 
opened the week before, not a single couple came.  That's probably because 
the city of Santa Barbara had already had a registry in place for two years.

  And there will soon be a new registry in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, after a 
10-to-7 Common Council vote this week that's being called the biggest victory 
for local gays and lesbians in a decade.  There was heavy lobbying both pro 
and con.  Campaigns of leafleting and phone banking were carried out by both 
the Domestic Partners Task Force and its opponents, including anti-gay 
activist preacher Ralph Ovadal's Wisconsin Christians United.  Opponents also 
went door-to-door and bought airtime for a radio ad.  Much of the opposition, 
like Ovadal, came from people outside of Milwaukee, Wisconsin's largest city.

  The government of the Australian state of Queensland this week announced 
that it's preparing new bills recognizing unmarried couples, including gay 
and lesbian couples.  Premier Peter Beattie's government had already included 
gay and lesbian couples and anti-discrimination provisions in industrial 
relations measures covering employment and employee benefits.  This week he 
announced that new bills will recognize unmarried couples' property rights 
and provide them equal protection from domestic violence.  
Admitting that the state's gay rights record had been "somewhat patchy," 
Beattie said, ""I believe that looking at what we've done is no less than 
what any progressive or responsible government should have legislated for, 
and it should have been done a long time ago. It's simply a matter of 
humanity."
Beattie's government had tried to bring forward similar proposals last year, 
but his own party demanded he hold off until after a crucial local election 
had been held.

  British voters who'll be selecting the Lord Mayor of London won't have the 
option of choosing openly gay millionaire Ivan Massow.  Only about a week 
after publishing his intention to seek the Conservative Party's nomination, 
Massow withdrew as the deadline arrived, saying he did not want to be a token 
gay candidate.  Now he's saying he'd like to become a Member of Parliament.

  And finally, at a conference in Nottingham this week, Cardiff University 
English professor Stephen Knight "outed" the legendary Robin Hood in an 
academic paper entitled, "The Forest Queen."  Knight bases his claim on the 
earliest sources describing the bandit, ballads of the 14th century.  Coded 
to suit the oppressive values of the time, they describe rather domestic 
tiffs over money between Robin and Little John, set in a greenwood 
representing fertility, with swords and arrows as phallic symbols.  Maid 
Marian never existed at all, Knight says, but was added to suit the tastes of 
audiences in the 16th century.  Even the "London Times" couldn't resist 
noting that the truer Hollywood representation was not Kevin Costner's "Robin 
Hood: Prince of Thieves" but Mel Brooks' "Robin Hood: Men in Tights".