“NewsWrap"
for the week ending June 13, 2009
(As broadcast on "This Way Out" program #1,107, distributed 6-15-09)
[Written by Greg Gordon, with thanks to Rex Wockner with Bill Kelley]

Reported this week by Chris Coleman and Chris Wilson

  LGBT Pride events are held virtually year ‘round around the world, but many are held in June to specifically remember the Stonewall Riots in New York City that month in 1969.  They’re considered to have sparked the modern day global LGBT rights movement.
China’s first official LGBT Pride celebration wrapped up this weekend in Shanghai, the country’s biggest and most queer-welcoming city.  Despite the government’s cancellation of some events, Kenneth Tan, a spokesman for the organizers, Shanghai LGBT, called the festival an overall success.  They decided in advance not to hold a public Pride march for fear of provoking the authorities.
Drag queens dressed in Chinese opera costumes and a "Big Bash" barbecue were highlights of the weeklong festival.
People took buses to an after-party at a bar on Shanghai's famous Bund promenade.
Earlier in the week, drag and fashion shows and a “hot body” competition drew at least 500 people to the garden area of a bar that was hidden from view by a rainbow banner covering the surrounding fence.

  Even though all events were held at private venues, Shanghai authorities forced the cancellation of 2 of them.  Tan told reporters that authorities forced a restaurant to cancel a screening of a lesbian-themed film, and a performance at a local photo gallery of “The Laramie Project,” a play about the gay-bashing murder of U.S. college student Matthew Shepard, ostensibly because the 2 venues were not licensed to hold such events.
Tan said uniformed police officers also entered a venue hosting a gay literary event earlier in the week.  "Nothing happened,” he said, “but if you're in the audience and you see policemen arrive, it's really intimidating.”
A “Queer Olympiad” that will include swimming and badminton competitions was planned for the final day of the festival.

  The state-run “China Daily” newspaper called the weeklong festival an event “of profound significance.”  Same-gender sex was only decriminalized in China in 1997, and homosexuality was officially viewed as a mental disorder until 2001.
The “China Daily” said that there are about 30 million gays and lesbians in China � that’s less than 3 percent of thhe population.

  In Israel, tens of thousands danced in the streets of Tel Aviv on June 12th to pulsating music as the city celebrated its 11th annual Gay Pride Parade.  Rainbow flags flew across Tel Aviv's central city and main beaches, as celebrants, many wearing bathing suits, road colorfully decorated floats, or walked in the blazing heat, as onlookers watched from the sidewa lk or from apartment balconies.
Israeli Interior Minister Eli Yishai of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party joined Israel's chief rabbis earlier in the week to demand that Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai either cancel or restrict the city-funded parade.  But he refused, saying that the city, which is celebrating 100 years since its founding this year, would continue to be a "warm house and an example of tolerance and openness which will also influence and pave the way for other places in Israel."
Pride events in Jerusalem have been loudly condemned by the city’s religious leaders, usually draw only a few thousand people, and are heavily guarded by police.  Violent physical attacks are not uncommon there.  By contrast, the peaceful parade in Tel Aviv, also dubbed the region's gay capital by the tourism industry, attracts many times over that number each year.

  Organizers said that about 50,000 people turned out for the Europride festival in the Swiss city of Zurich, capped off by the traditional Pride parade on June 6th.
The festival, which was first held in London in 1993, takes place in a different European city every year, attracting participants from across the continent.
Zurich, Switzerland's largest city, was decorated with the movement's traditional rainbow flags for this year’s festivities, under the impetus of its recently elected openly lesbian Socialist Party Mayor Corine Mauch.
One gay celebrant told “Agence France Presse,” "I saw a few straight couples and I went to ask them why they were here, and they found my questions very absurd.  They said: 'why shouldn't we be here, it's where the party is.'"
Europride travels to far less-welcoming Warsaw next year.

  Pride proclamations were issued this month in the U.S. by both Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama.  But LGBT activists are growing increasingly impatient with the president, who’s now been in office for almost 5 months, for his failure to act on several of his campaign promises.
There’s seemingly been little action or public statements from the White House urging passage of sexual orientation- and gender identity-based hate crimes legislation.  A spokesman for the Human Rights Campaign told the “Washington Blade” LGBT newspaper this week that Senate leadership has decided to include it as an amendment to another bill instead of as a stand-alone measure, which could be derailed with a filibuster by conservative opponents.  A stand-alone bill passed the House by almost 75 votes in late April.

  Obama has refused to issue an executive order to at least temporarily halt the discharge of gay and lesbian servicemembers under the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy.  Several legal advocates have insisted that he has the power to do that.  But his administration has adopted a “go slow” process and insists that the Pentagon must be on board, and that Congress has the ultimate authority to address the 16-year-old Clinton-era policy.  And the Obama administration issued a statement of support this week for the Supreme Court’s refusal to consider a constitutional challenge to the policy.  According to court papers, the administration said that a lower court was correct to rule that the ban was "rationally related to the government's legitimate interest in military discipline and cohesion."  Perhaps equally troubling, the word “change” has been used most recently by administration officials in discussing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” instead of specifically referring to its “repeal”.

  And Obama’s Justice Department this week added insult to injury by filing a motion to dismiss a legal challenge to the Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA, which bans federal recognition of same-gender marriages legally conducted in any states that sanction them.  A spokesman told reporters that it’s customary for the Justice Department to “defend the law on the books,” and again deferred to Congress to repeal the law, signed by then-President Bill Clinton in 1996.  According to the brief: “...the only right at issue in this case is a right to receive certain benefits on the basis of a same-sex marriage.  No court has ever found such a right to federal benefits on that basis to be fundamental � in fact, all of the courts that have coonsidered the question have rejected such a claim.”
Virtually ev ery national LGBT rights group strongly condemned the Justice Department’s arguments, particularly the financial aspects, as did the American Civil Liberties Union.  A joint press release charged the Obama administration with “using many of the same flawed legal arguments that the Bush administration used” to defend DOMA.  Indeed, gay activist and blogger Andrew Sullivan reported this week that the Department of Justice brief was written by W. Scott Simpson, a holdover from the Bush administration.
Obama during last year’s presidential campaign: [sound: his “fierce advocate” for LGBT rights comments]. Gay columnist Dan Savage wrote this week that “Maybe he meant to say ‘fierce apathy.’  Or "’fierce antipathy.’  Because if this... is ‘fierce advocacy,’ Mr. President, we'll take benign neglect.”

  But finally, there’s a happy outcome for a California 6th grader, whose school had banned her from making a class presentation about LGBT rights pioneer Harvey Milk.
Mt. Woodson Elementary School claimed that Natalie Jones’ project required students to have written parental permission for what it decided was a presentation on human sexuality.
The American Civil Liberties Union threatened a lawsuit on Natalie’s behalf, charging the school with a violation of her rights to free speech.  The group reported this week that the school has sent a letter of apology to Natalie, and promised to make parents aware of=2 0the apology.
Elizabeth Gill, a staff attorney with the A.C.L.U. National LGBT Project, said that “There’s a tremendous difference between sex education and writing or talking about someone who happens to be gay, and we’re glad we were able to help the school finally understand that.”
The A.C.L.U. insists that Natalie should finally be allowed to give her presentation to all the other members of her independent research project class.
Natalie's mother Bonnie Jones said in a statement that “I’m always proud of my daughter, of course, but I’m even more proud of her for the way she stood up for her rights... I think if Harvey Milk were still here today, he’d be happy about how this all worked out.”



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