ju st out ▼ January 5, 1 9 9 6 ▼ 7
SERIOUS INJURYDEATH
CLAIMS resulting from:
PFLAG gets high-
powered legal help
Hogan & Hartson LLP, a prominent District of
Columbia law firm, has agreed to provide Parents,
Families and Friends o f Lesbians and Gays pro bono
legal assistance in PFL A G ’s battle with Pat
Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network.
Hogan and Hartson attorneys will deal with First
Amendment issues raised by C BN ’s legal threats
against television stations that air ads from PFLAG’s
“Project Open Mind,” a national and grass-roots
outreach campaign to fight the spread of homophobic
hate speech and activities. The campaign was
launched in November in W ashington, D.C., Hous
ton, Atlanta and Tulsa. The first television ads
featured anti-gay statements by Robertson, Jerry
Falwell and Sen. Jesse Helms paired with images of
gay-bashing and gay-related teen suicide.
Robertson and CBN threatened legal action to
prevent the ads from airing. Television stations have
refused to run the ads in the wake o f CBN ’s legal
threats.
ing Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.). No one yet has asked
Gingrich to co-sponsor this version. The most sig
nificant change is to add AIDS wasting syndrome
and spastic conditions to the list of diseases ap
proved for use.
Log Cabin Republicans spokesman David Greer
said “the medicinal purposes have been validated.”
He urged Republicans to support the bill.
Robert Kampia, director of government rela
tions for the Marijuana Policy Project, is “excited”
by introduction of the bill. But he admits “it is going
to be tough to make this a priority for any committee
to hold hearings because there are so many other
things going on.” He hopes hearings will take place
next year.
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Supreme Court asked
to review job bias case
Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund
filed a petition in December asking the U.S. Su
preme Court to review a decision by a Pennsylvania
state court in a dispute concerning the terms of an
employment contract.
Daniel Miller, a certified public accountant, was
employed by Demuth Management Consultants for
five years. He was fired in 1990 when his employer,
Donald L. Demuth, discovered M iller is gay. Years
earlier, Miller had signed an employment contract
with Demuth which included a clause that stated
“homosexuality” was “cause” for discharge. An
other clause in the contract provided for hefty pen
alties if any of D emuth’s clients took their business
to Miller after his termination.
After the firing. M iller started his own business.
Demuth subsequently sued Miller to invoke the
latter clause. Thejudgment found in favorof Demuth.
Miller was subjected to a penalty of more than
$
100 , 000 .
Pennsylvania law does not prohibit employment
discrimination based on sexual orientation.
Kristine Chatwood
Frank introduces
medical marijuana bill
A bill to regulate the medical use of marijuana
was introduced in the U.S. House o f Representa
tives on Nov. 10 by Barney Frank (D-Mass.). HR
2816 is being co-sponsored by four other Demo
cratic members of Congress.
The bill would reclassify marijuana from aSched-
ule I “nocurrently accepted medical use in treatment
in the United States” medicine to a tightly controlled
Schedule II medicine under the Controlled Sub
stance Act.
“It is cruel to deny a proven, safe and helpful
remedy to people who are seriously ill,” Frank said.
“ More addictive, expensive and less-efficient nar
cotics are regularly prescribed by physicians, and
the ban on allowing marijuana to be included in the
list has no reasonable basis.”
Advocates claim that marijuana is equal or supe
rior to other treatment options— in terms of effec
tiveness, dosage control and cost— for alleviating a
variety o f medical conditions. Most important to the
lesbian and gay community is its use as an appetite
stimulant to treat AIDS wasting syndrome and to
combat the effects of nausea associated with radia
tion- or chemotherapy used in treating Kaposi’s
sarcoma, breast and other forms of cancer.
The bill is modeled after one first introduced in
1981 by Rep. Stuart McKinney (R-Conn.)and then
co-sponsored by m any other Republicans, includ
Arts & Crafts Construction
Barney Frank
He sees the Judiciary Committee as a favorable
venue. Frank is a member o f that committee, and its
chair, Henry Hyde (R-Ill.), “understood that mari
juana did have some medical benefits and he seemed
to think it was not an outrageous idea to make it
medically available,” said Kampia. Subcommittee
Chair Bill McCollum (R-Fla.) co-sponsored the
original bill in 1981.
Frank, in a keynote address to the National
Organization for Reform of Marijuana Laws in
September 1994, called this “probably the most
important undiscussed issue that we have. The fear
to talk about this is so great that even when you do
talk about it, people don’t pay much attention.”
“Medical marijuana is one of the easiest public-
policy issues I’ve ever heard,” Frank said. “For the
government of the United States to deny a doctor’s
right to prescribe what he thinks is best for that
patient is wholly at variance with most of the prin
ciples my colleagues profess.”
He vowed “to continue to try to shame my
colleagues into changing this policy.”
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Ithaca denies gay
marriage license request
The city of Ithaca, N.Y., spent several months
considering the request by two gay men for a mar
riage license before finally deciding it just wasn’t
ready to make the commitment. In a legal memoran
dum, City Attorney Charles Guttman passed the
buck to the New York State Health Department,
which oversees licensing, when he noted that the
Health Department had stated that “city clerks should
not issue a marriage license to persons o f the same
sex.”
Phillip G. and Toshav Storrs, the couple that
applied for the license, called Guttman’s statement
a “cop-out.” They are considering a lawsuit to
compel the granting of a license, reports the New
York Times News Service.
The mayor, the city attorney and the Ithaca
Common Council all supported issuing the license.
Although the city decided it did not have the author
ity to issue the license, Guttman wrote, “Denying
same-sex couples an equal right to choose a marital
partner renders their unions legally invisible and
deprives them of the panoply o f practical day-to-day
rights, duties and benefits that are linked, often
exclusively, to official marital status. Interference
with their right to marry also means that society as
a whole is deprived of a way of stabilizing and re
enforcing their valuable family unions.”.
i > -
1 ’• Kristine Chatwood
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