“NewsWrap"
for the week ending October 10, 2009
(As broadcast on "This Way Out" program #1,124, distributed 10-12-09)
[Written by Greg Gordon, with thanks to Rex Wockner with Bill Kelley]

Reported this week by Jenn Mahoney and Chris Wilson

  A report issued this week by Australia’s National Human Rights Consultation Committee recommended a statutory charter of rights.  The report said a Human Rights Act to create such a bill of rights should include a right to marry and adopt, which would likely fuel the country’s already simmering debate on marriage equality for gay and lesbian couples.  The report also recommends a law guaranteeing the right to life, which is likely to inflame abortion activists on either side of that issue.  Australia’s High Court would be asked to rule if parliament passed legislation that could be challenged as incompatible with a provision of the human rights charter.
Attorney General Robert McClelland wasn’t specific about how the Government would respond to the report, saying only that the Rudd administration would carefully consider it and that "The key debate... is not about whether we protect human rights - it is about how we protect human rights."

  A Defense Department funding bill passed this week in the U.S. House of Representatives includes a provision extending hate crime protections to people targeted on the basis of their gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, or disability.
The conference report for the bill, which reconciles different versions passed separately in the House and the Senate, will now move to what is expected to be a quick vote in the Senate.  Allison Herwitt, legislative director of the Human Rights Campaign, told reporters that “A conference report cannot be amended, so it's simply an up or down vote in the Senate... We are extremely optimistic."
The provision is known as the Matthew Shepard & James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act.  It recognizes Shepard, a gay college student who was brutally murdered in 1998 near Laramie, Wyoming because of his sexual orientation.  Even though existing hate crime laws include race as a protected category, Byrd was also named because he was violently murdered the same year in Jasper, Texas because he was Black.
The legislation would expand hate crime laws to include physical assaults based on actual or perceived sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, or disability, and would allow the U.S. Justice Department to assist in the investigation and prosecution of such crimes.  Similar legislation, first introduced in 2001, had no real chance of success during the 8-year administration of George W. Bush, who consistently threatened to veto such a measure.  Current President Barack Obama has consistently supported it.

  The United States Senate is expected to confirm an openly gay lawyer - David Huebner – as the country’s next ambassador to New Zealand.
While it’s not expected to be controversial in New Zealand, it is the Obama administration's first appointment of an openly gay ambassador.  Former Presidents George Bush and Bill Clinton each appointed an openly gay ambassador.
Huebner is currently a lawyer based in Shanghai for a United States law firm, where he specializes in international arbitration and mediation.  He’s also general counsel for the U.S. Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation.
The U.S. ambassador to New Zealand is also traditionally the ambassador to Samoa, and Huebner will also fill that role.

  Elsewhere, an estimated 15,000 people filled the streets of Johannesburg, South Africa on October 4th for the continent’s largest-ever Pride celebration.  Joburg Gay Pride Festival co-chair Tanya Harford said in a press release that “This was a record turnout since the not-for-profit company was formed 3 years ago to organize the event.”  She said this year’s festivities saw about 5,000 more celebrants than in 2008.
While it was the city’s third consecutive annual Pride festival, Johannesburg hosted Africa’s first-ever Pride event 20 years ago.

  According to a report at “Gay-Russia-dot-r-u”, which organized the event with “Gay-Belarus-dot-b-y,” more than a hundred people from 9 Belarusian cities and 10 other countries gathered in Minsk in late September for what was called a “historic” LGBT rights conference.  The meeting was titled "LGBT Movement and NGOs: Prospects for Cooperation With Active Civil Society to Overcome Homophobia in Belarus."
Issues discussed by the conference participants included public activism, psychological and political aspects of homophobia, education of journalists, the role of gay businesses, and religion and homosexuality.
Delegates concluded the gathering with a resolution to be sent to the Belarus government and parliament urging passage of laws banning discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, making hate speech a crime, and extending spousal rights to same-gender couples.  Representatives from the French, Hungarian and Swedish embassies attended the conference, and the Swedish Embassy hosted an evening reception.

  In other news, a court in Moscow this week upheld the refusal of the city’s civil registry to issue a marriage license to a lesbian couple.  The court ruled that Russian law defines marriage as exclusively heterosexual.  Irina Fedotova-Fet and Irina Shipitko said the decision was not unexpected, and vowed to appeal.  They also said they planned to fly to Canada later this month to legally marry.  They’ll then return to Russia and demand that authorities recognize the marriage.

  In the U.S., the Montana Supreme Court has ruled in favor of a lesbian who sued her former partner for parental rights of the children they helped raise together.
According to the “Advocate,” this week’s 6-to-1 decision granted parental rights to Michelle Kulstad of Missoula, who helped raise a boy and a girl with Barbara Maniaci during their 10-year relationship.  After the couple broke up in 2006, Kulstad sued to maintain her parental rights.  Maniaci, the legal adoptive parent of the children, is now married to a man.
The court ruled that Kulstad had established a parental relationship with the children during the course of her partnership with Maniaci, and was worthy of parental rights.
In a seemingly extraordinary special concurrence to the majority opinion, Justice James Nelson wrote that he remained "absolutely convinced that homosexuals are entitled to enjoy precisely the same civil and natural rights as heterosexuals, as a matter of constitutional law.  Naming it for the evil it is, discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, is an expression of bigotry.  Lesbian and gay Montanans must not be forced to fight to marry, to raise their children, and to live with the same dignity that is accorded heterosexuals."

  And finally, if you were booking a flight to Chako Paul City in northern Sweden, allegedly populated by 25,000 love-starved lesbians, you might want to reconsider.
A story about the city was picked up by news networks in China, where Internet providers reportedly couldn’t handle the millions of men desperately searching for the city’s exact location.  It was said to have been created in the 1820’s by a man-hating widow... but in reality, Chako Paul City is nothing more than an online hoax.  Claes Bertilson, a government spokesman, told Sweden’s English-language news service “The Local” that he had “no idea where this came from but it’s not true”.  He also noted that “at 25,000 residents, the town would [have to] be one of the largest in northern Sweden.”
Disappointed tourists – all are warmly welcomed – may want to redirect their travel plans to the real Australian town of Alice Springs.  A recent television documentary recounted how lesbian culture developed in Alice Springs after several hundred women marched into town in 1983 to protest the nearby Pine Gap U.S. military intelligence base.  "Many of the participants in the protests were lesbians who came, saw and decided to stay," the documentary noted.  "Since then, the town of Alice Springs has become a haven for lesbians."
Gay and Lesbian Tourism Australia regional director Phil Walcott told reporters this week that Alice Springs was in fact the undiscovered lesbian capital of Australia because of its high per-capita residency.  "Alice is a wonderland," he said.