“NewsWrap"
for the week ending January 31, 2009
 (As broadcast on "This Way Out" program #1,088, distributed 2-2-09)
[Written by Greg Gordon, with thanks to Rex Wockner with Bill Kelley]

Reported this week by Chris Wilson and Pam Marshall

  It was widely reported this week that the world will have its first openly lesbian Prime Minister.  Iceland’s 66-year-old Social Affairs Minister Johanna Sigurdardottir would also be her country’s first female P.M.
In a country where LGBT and heterosexual cultures seem to meld seamlessly, Icelanders generally consider Johanna’s sexuality to be a non-issue.
Iceland has been particularly hard-hit by the global economic meltdown, and public outrage � including the largest anti-government demonstrationn in years - forced the center-conservative coalition to resign.  Johanna has been picked by a new center-left coalition to be the caretaker P.M. until national elections, which have tentatively been scheduled for May 9th.
Her Social Democrats have 18 seats in Parliament, the Greens have 9, the Progressives have 7, and the Liberals have 4.  The former government-leading conservative Independence Party currently holds 25 seats.  The parties winning the largest percentage of votes in the election will decide who the next permanent prime minister will be.

  Most observers are saying that Johanna’s party won’t have enough votes for her to remain as Prime Minister beyo nd the May elections.  But despite the general public’s overwhelming distaste for other ministers in the ruling coalition, she was recently named by 73 percent of respondents in Iceland’s Gallup Poll as her nation’s most popular government official.
Johanna began her slow rise to power as a flight attendant in 1962, and is a longtime union organizer.  She first won election to Iceland’s Parliament in 1978, and served as the country’s Minister of Social Affairs for several governments from 1987 to 1994.  She returned to lead the ministry again in May 2007, and has held that post since then.   She’s known for allocating generous amounts of public funding to help the disabled, the elderly, and domestic violence organizations, and her refusal to accept a government-subsidized luxury car and personal chauffeur has endeared her to the public.  She’s seen by many as a unifying character capable of easing tensions in Iceland.
Johanna has for several years been in a civil union with 54-year-old author, journalist and playwright Jonina Leosdottir.  Those unions give such couples the same legal rights as heterosexual marriage.

  Colombia’s Constitutional Court ruled this week that same-gender couples must be given the same rights as heterosexuals in common-law marriages.  The ruling, which specifically includes state benefits, and residency and housing protections, builds upon earlier high court decisions giving gay and lesbian couples inheritance, pension , health, and social security rights.
The Court has specifically said in its rulings, however, that the creation of civil unions for lesbian and gay couples was an issue for the country’s legislature.  Lobbying by the country’s dominant Roman Catholic Church, which threatened supportive lawmakers with denial of the sacraments, doomed such a bill in Colombia’s parliament last year.  All the advances for same-gender couples in the South American country have come from Constitutional Court rulings.

  A U.S. federal court this week denied the request of Proposition 8 backers to block access to the names and addresses of some 36,000 people who donated money in support of California’s same-gender marriage ban, which passed by more than 52 percent in November.
The two groups spearheading that effort, ProtectMarriage-dot-com and the National Organization for Marriage California, claimed that donors have been the target of threats, vandalism, and public protests.  But the court upheld the state's 35-year-old Political Reform Act, which makes the identities of those giving $100 or more to ballot initiatives or politicians a matter of public record.  U.S. District Judge Morrison England Jr. ruled that "If there ever needs to be sunshine on a political issue, it is with a ballot measure."
Yes on 8 campaign officials said hundreds of people have alleged harassment, intimidation or threats.  They argued that First Amendment rights to be free from retaliation outweighed the state's intere st in disclosure.  According to court records, however, only one of the 9 people mentioned in the lawsuit claiming harassment actually donated to the campaign.  The other 8 worked as volunteers, spoke at campaign rallies, or displayed yard signs and bumper stickers.
California Attorney General Jerry Brown and Secretary of State Debra Bowen have both said that people should file criminal reports if they experience harassment.  They wrote that Prop 8 backers should not be given “a special privilege of anonymity for themselves alone."
While the federal district court ruling prevents Prop 8 supporters from obtaining a preliminary injunction against the state’s release of further donor names in the coming week, the “Associated Press” reported that the decision is still likely to be appealed.
The California Supreme Court is expected to hear oral arguments in the legal challenge to the constitutionality of Proposition 8 itself in March.

  The news was not as good for LGBT people in other parts of the world.  The government of Bahrain � a Middle Eastern constitutional mmonarchy � is cracking down on a number of online social networking ssites, including gay and lesbian sites.
The country is considered to be more liberal than its other Islamic neighbors like Saudi Arabia, but same-gender sex is still a social taboo and a criminal offense there.  LGBT activists worry that the denial of access in Bahrain to such popular online sites as Gaydar-dot-com will f orce more courageous gays and lesbians to meet in public, placing them at risk for harm from family, friends, and strangers.

  The announcement that Lebanon’s LGBT rights group Helem has won the prestigious Felipa de Souza Award from IGLHRC � the Internatiional Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission � was tempered by reporrts this week that two gay men were assaulted and arrested by members of the country’s military.  The two were apparently having sex in the lobby of an uninhabited building in a Beirut suburb when Lebanese Army soldiers discovered them.  They were dragged out into the street, humiliated, and severely beaten.  Bystanders eventually intervened, but after spending the night in a military barracks the men were handed over to civil authorities and reportedly remain in custody.  Lebanon’s Penal Code punishes sex that “contradicts the laws of nature” with up to a year in prison.
The Felipa de Souza Award recognizes the courage and effectiveness of groups or individuals dedicated to improving the human rights of people who are stigmatized and abused because of their sexuality or HIV status.  Helem said on its Web site that "It is high time that the country's lawmakers looked at an obsolete, ridiculous law that condemns and punishes homosexuality in Lebanon.  At a time when gay marriage is permitted in many countries, the authorities hypocritically deny the simplest expression of reality, [which] they will have to face one day or ano ther."

  IGLHRC says that arrests of gay people also continue in Egypt, where, as we’ve previously reported, anti-gay abuse by government authorities has escalated in recent years.  The latest IGLHRC citation comes from a January 10th report from Cairo by “Almoheet,” a Pan-Arab online news portal, that read: “Security Services destroyed a network of homosexuals, following complaints to the Morality Unit of the Interior Ministry... After surveillance,” the report continues, “the detectives found out that all of the people who visited the apartment were gay, and the location was a place set up for gays to commit sodomy.  The ringleaders of the gay prostitution operation [included] a top producer at Egyptian TV, a fabric merchant, an accountant, and a young man who worked with foreign press.  Following the raid, 8 people were arrested and police confiscated gay pornography on the detainee's computers and on their cell phones.”

  And finally, far from the Middle East but in another chilling example of government abuse, Equality Maryland, the U.S. state's largest LGBT rights organization, was among at least 32 groups classified as “security threats” in a State Police database.  Targeted organizations also included Amnesty International and the Hiroshima-Nagasaki Commemoration Committee, all deemed to be "terrorists" by the state’s Homeland Security and Intelligence Division, which also kept dossiers on at least 50 individual activists.  For exam ple, police files described Equality Maryland's plans to hold rallies outside the State House in Annapolis to press for reversal of the state's ban on same-gender marriage among its alleged “terrorist” activities.
Copies of the files were obtained through a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland.  A dozen Democratic lawmakers at a press conference held to condemn the files this week promised to introduce legislation to prevent future surveillance of non-violent groups.
According to a story in the “Baltimore Sun,” the spying program began in 2005 and continued for at least a year under Republican governor Robert Ehrlich, who left office in 2007.  He’s denied knowing about the program.  But Sheila Hixson, lead sponsor of the Freedom of Association and Assembly Protection Act of 2009 in the House of Delegates, said it was clear that "State police get their orders from the executive department... They don't just decide on their own to spy on a group because they have nothing else to do."  Under the proposed bill, police would need "reasonable articulated suspicion of actual criminal activity" before they could conduct surveillance.





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