Just briefs
Seattle gay city employees get
benefits
Europeans join AIDS
conference boycott
Seattle quietly became the largest Ameri
can city to provide health insurance and other
benefits to gay city employees and their
partners last month when a City Council
measure that had placed the health benefits on
hold expired.
The process began last April when the
Human Rights Department determined that
the absence of such benefits for unmarried
partners violated the city’s fair employment
regulations.
In response, the City Council granted city
employees with domestic partners sick and
bereavement leave rights. The possibility of
health benefits for unmarried spouses,
however, had been placed on hold three
months earlier when the council learned that
such a move could disqualify the city from
deducting the premiums on its income taxes.
But in the intervening months. Congress
repealed the problematic IRS statute, and
when the Seattle suspension expired March 1,
domestic partners became eligible for
insurance along with the other benefits.
The new benefits face opposition from
fundamentalist Christians who are collecting
signatures to place a repeal initiative on the
ballot.
Other cities providing health insurance to
unmarried couples include Berkeley, West
Hollywood and Santa Cruz, California.
Delegates to the First European Confer
ence on HIV and Homosexuality have signed
on to the growing boycott of the Sixth
International Conference on AIDS, scheduled
for June 20-24 in San Francisco.
The 200 delegates join numerous AIDS
service organizations, scientists and
governmental health officials from Europe,
Canada, Australia and the US in refusing to
attend the gathering. They all object to US
immigration rules that require HIV-positive
foreigners to receive an “HIV waiver” before
entering the country.
In a resolution, the European delegates
“demand[ed] the abolition of travel
restrictions based on HIV antibody status
throughout the world and in particular the
USA.”
The conference, held in Copenhagen, was
subtitled, “Re-Gaying HIV," in recognition of
the fact that the “AIDS establishment” is
rapidly gaining control of the AIDS
organizations founded and nurtured by
homosexuals.
British activist and conference organizer
Simon Watney charged that the “heterosexual
professionals who have entered the field have
refused to learn anything from gay community
experience, which is demonstrably the most
important factor in safer sex. There is a
recalcitrant homophobia,” he said.
Alternative media: writing
between the lines
Activists protest NY phone sex
restriction
A group of Portland alternative media
people, who earn their livings communicating
with readers and listeners, have begun talking
to each other.
The yet-unnamed group, which includes
representatives of the Clinton Street
Quarterly, unCommon Women’s Press,
Portland Cable Access, the Portland Alliance
and KBOO, plans to form an alternative
media association that could serve as an
information center, professional society, free
speech defense network and resource for
journalists.
About 50 members of Safe Call, a coali
tion of gay and AIDS activists, civil liberties
groups and phone-sex line owners, demon
strated outside the offices of New York
Telephone last month to protest the com
pany’s plans to stop billing for “adult” phone
services.
The protestors charged that the phone
company’s decision limits free speech, cuts
off safe-sex alternatives and will cause severe
damage to the gay and lesbian press, which
receives advertising revenue from phone-sex
services.
New York Telephone had announced it
would no longer bill for any “adult” phone
services in order to protect its corporate
image. Phone sex operators say this move
will drive their companies out of business,
since they cannot afford the technology to do
their own billing and since many phone-sex
customers do not have credit cards, the only
other billing option.
“It’s murderous,” said Kendall Morrison,
who own several New York adult lines and is
also the publisher of OutWeek magazine.
“Phone sex fights AIDS.”
Team Portland: the clothes on
their backs
Team Portland athletes will bring a little
piece of Portland business with them to the
third annual Gay Games. Bridgetown Realty
has agreed to finance $750 worth of uniforms
in exchange for having the Bridgetown name
inscribed on the outfits. The team is seeking
two other Gold Medal sponsors who will also
have their business names printed on the
uniforms.
More than 100 athletes are registered so
far to compete in most of the 27 sports at the
Gay Games. Interested athletes may get
registration forms and learn about Team
Portland at a registration fair on April 18. This
event, open to team members and interested
parties, will be at the downtown YWCA, 1111
SW 10th Avenue, from 6-8 pm.
1 out ▼ 6 T
April 1990
Court orders jail visitation for
lesbian couple
A Pennsylvania county jail cannot prevent
an inmate’s lesbian lover from visiting her, a
federal judge ruled last month. The warden of
a western Pennsylvania jail had refused to
allow the inmate visitation with her lover on
grounds that the prison “can’t condone such
relationships.”
The American Civil Liberties Union
challenged the policy as a denial of the
inmate’s rights under the 14th Amendment’s
equal protection clause. A federal judge
agreed with the ACLU and declared the jail s
policy unconstitutional on March 14.
The case arose last summer when the
inmate, identified as Jane Doe, wrote the
warden to request that her lover be allowed to
visit. “I love her and she loves me, and I sure
would like to see someone I love,” she wrote.
“She is all I got.” At a December hearing in
federal court, the warden said that at the time
he denied Doe’s request, he believed that
homosexual conduct was illegal in
Pennsylvania.
“This decision means an end to a policy
under which lesbian and gay prisoners were
second-class persons within the prison,” said
Nan D. Hunter, director of the ACLU Lesbian
and Gay Rights Project. “It represents another
court’s recognition that the Constitution’s
protection of equality rights must prevail over
irrational prejudice.”
Senate rejects Anti-Gay
Amendment
In a major victory for the lesbian and gay
community, the U.S. Senate voted down an
amendment that would have allowed
Washington, D.C. organizations to bar
lesbians and gay men from working with
children. The victory last month represents the
second time in less than 30 days that the
Senate sided with the gay and lesbian
community on a critical vote.
The Senate rejected an amendment by Sen.
William Armstrong (R-Colo.) that would have
allowed D.C. groups to bar any lesbian or gay
man from serving as a “role model, mentor or
companion to any minor.”
Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.)
offered substitute language, which the Senate
adopted, that would allow organizations to
deny posts to heterosexuals, gays and
bisexuals who have been charged or convicted
of sexual offenses with minors.
“The Senate rejected the obviously false
notion that lesbians and gays cannot be
appropriate role models or that we pose a
threat to children,” said Stephen Smith,
legislative director of the Human Rights
Campaign Fund.
A different kind of children’s
story
A new line of books from Alyson
Publications will target the youngest people
touched by gay and lesbian issues — the
children of homosexual parents. Publisher
Sash Alyson announced plans for the books at
OUT/WRITE ’90, a national lesbian and gay
writers’ conference held in San Francisco
March 3-4.
Ten years ag0’ w°uldn’t have been
possible, said Alyson. “We believe that these
books will be popular not only with lesbian
and gay parents but will all parents, teachers
and librarians who recognize and value the
true diversity of families that exist today —
and who wish to teach children about these
new families.”
Western Union loses lesbian and
gay account
From now on, when the nation’s largest
gay and lesbian political organization has
something to tell Congress, it won’t send the
message through Western Union.
The Human Rights Campaign Fund
director, Tim McFeeley, announced last
month that the fund would pull its estimated
$350,000 worth of business — the cost of the
“speak out” constituent mail program — from
Western Union because of the company’s
efforts to overturn a San Francisco ordinance
protecting lesbians and gays from
discrimination.
“What Western Union is doing presents a
threat to the rights of lesbian and gay
Americans than any other corporate action in
recent memory. We have no intention of
remaining silent while efforts are made to
undermine protections that lesbian and gay
Americans have fought so long to achieve,”
McFeeley said.
Western Union is challenging the
constitutionality of the San Francisco
ordinance as part of a legal battle that began
last year. Armand Ertag, a Western Union
employee in San Francisco, sought damages
against the company for harassment and
intimidation he experienced at work. Rather
than address the specifics of Ertag’s suit, the
company has sought to have the gay rights
ordinance overturned.
Human rights campaign fund
backs women’s health bill
The largest national gay and lesbian
political organization, the Human Rights
Campaign Fund, will give women’s cancer
legislation a high priority on its advocacy
agenda, the fund executive director announced
last month.
“Health issues are at the top of HRCF’s
political agenda. In 1989, there was an
estimated 43,000 deaths due to breast cancer,
6.000 deaths due to cervical cancer, 4,000
deaths due to cancer of the edometrium and
12.000 deaths due to ovarian cancer. These
statistics cannot go ignored,” executive
director Tim McFeeley said.
Women who have not had children are at
particular risk for these forms of
gynecological cancers.
The HCRF will work with U.S. Rep.
Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) to build
Congressional support for the Breast and
Cervical Cancer Mortality Prevention Act of
1990. The act would create new Public Health
Service grants to provide low-income women
with preventive health screening and referral
services for breast and cervical cancer.