ju s t o u t ▼ ju n e 2 0 . 1 9 9 7 V 13
Can w e step h a te ?
President Clinton has called for a national meeting
to address the issue of bias crime
▼
by Bob Roehr
resident Clinton turned to the “hatred
and division that still exist in our soci­
ety” on June 7 in his regular Saturday
radio address to the nation.
Among the incidents he cited was
an anti-gay beating and robbery in Washington,
D.C. “Such hate crimes, committed solely be­
cause the victims have a different skin color or a
different faith or are gays or lesbians, leave deep
scars not only on the victims, but on our larger
community,” he said.
The cornerstone of his effort will be a national
conference Nov. 10 which will bring together
experts and community leaders to discuss how to
ease the problem. Attorney General Janet Reno
has begun a review of laws concerning
hate crimes.
The president’s remarks were not seen
as controversial. In 1990, conservative
Henry Hyde (R-lll.) took a leadership
role in passing the Hate Crimes Statistics
Act, which included lesbians and gay
men. President Bush invited gay leaders
to a Rose Garden signing ceremony. Ear­
lier this month even that bastion of pro­
gressive thinking the Louisiana state Leg­
islature moved a bill which allows for
enhanced penalties for hate crimes.
“President Clinton has the ability to
set a national tone that hate-violence will
not be tolerated,” said Elizabeth Birch, executive
director of the Human Rights Campaign, in prais­
ing the initiative.
Kerry Lobel, executive director of the Na­
tional Gay and Lesbian Task Force welcomed “a
more vigorous effort to stamp out these acts of
violence.” The Task Force took the lead in pro­
posing and lobbying for the 1990 federal legisla­
tion. It was an important first step in documenting
anti-gay violence.
Legislators butt heads
over HIV-drug funding
Congressional budget negotiators refused to
accept a proposal by Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-
Calif.) and others to add $68 million to the federal
AIDS Drug Assistance Program this year. Ac­
cording to the Washington Blade, Republican
leaders in the House of Representatives nixed the
proposal to tack the amendment onto a fiscal year
1997 supplemental appropriations bill aimed os­
tensibly at paying for flood relief in North Da­
kota. (President Clinton recently vetoed the bill
because, he said, it had too many unrelated amend­
ments.)
Rep. John Porter (R-Ill.), chair of the House
appropriations subcommittee in charge of health-
related issues, told the Blade he is sympathetic to
those calling for an increase in ADAP funding,
but said that any increase would need to be spe­
cifically requested by the White House.
TheClinton administration, believing the $ 167
million already budgeted for the program to be
sufficient, declined to make such a request.
Meanwhile, civil rights and AIDS activists
were caught off guard by an inconspicuous clause
in the Senate version of the same supplemental
budget bill, which called for the elimination of a
federal purchasing discount program that would
allow state and county hospitals to buy AIDS
drugs at discounts of up to 60 percent through
bulk purchases. The clause was withdrawn after
several lawmakers, including openly gay Rep.
Jim Kolbe (R-Ariz.), raised objections.
Keith Boykin, executive director of the Na­
tional Black Lesbian and Gay Leadership Forum,
said he was grateful for the president’s remarks
but thought they “broke no new ground.” He sees
the conference as an opportunity to further edu­
cate the U.S. public on hate crimes against all
groups, including lesbians and gay men.
'T he conference is a sop to the left,” said Riki
Anne Wilchins, executive director of the trans­
gender political organization GenderPAC. “It’s
like saying you are for motherhood and against
badness; it’s a no-brainer.”
GenderPAC was among the groups who met
with the Justice Department in mid-May to dis­
cuss the issue.
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People need to be “speaking out about hate
crimes against people who are gender queer,
gender different, or simply gender vulnerable,”
said Wilchins. “That includes everyone from [mur­
dered transsexual] Brandon Teena, to a straight
girl in the East Village with a one-inch hair cut
and piercings who goes home to her parents for a
visit and gets beat up, to a straight man in prison
who is raped. Those are all gender hate crimes.”
When an ordinary Realtor sim ply won't do...
A kinder, gentler post office
Kathy J. Worthington, an employee of the
U.S. Postal Service’s Remote Encoding Center in
Salt Lake City, has been granted open-ended
leave to care for her partner, Sarah Hamblin, who
has breast cancer and must undergo chemotherapy
treatments every three weeks.
“She has a family member who may be dying
and she needs time off,” Karen Kolowich, the
facility’s interim manager, told the Salt Lake
Tribune.
The Postal Service twice denied Worthington’s
request for leave without pay. Her attempt to
invoke the Family and Medical Leave Act, a 1993
law requiring companies with more than 50 em­
ployees to grant up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave
for workers to care for ailing spouses, children,
parents or themselves, was hindered by the fact
that she and Hamblin are not spouses in the eyes
of the law. The couple has exchanged rings and
has shared a committed relationship for five years.
Before embarking on the arduous road of a
court battle, Worthington made a last-ditch effort
to win over Kolowich, who eventually intervened
with the organization’s legal department and
helped procure the indefinite leave of absence for
Worthington.
Postal Service officials emphasize that this
leave was not granted under any workplace policy,
particularly not under the Family and Medical
Leave Act, and say that it does not set a precedent
for the rest of the 760,000 postal workers.
Compiled by Christopher D. Cuttone
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