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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (April 2, 1999)
aprilZl riusi jiin e w s T AUSTRALIA he federal police extended workplace ben ( efits to employees’ same-sex partners in March. The decision fol lowed a request from the partner of Alan Scott, a liaison offi cer stationed in Italy. The Australian Council for Lesbian and Gay Rights greeted the news with a demand that the military immedi Rodney Croome ately follow suit. “While the military takes into account the relationships of heterosexual service personnel who are periodically relocated great distances from their former posting, it doesn’t give a damn about homosexual service personnel in similar circumstances,” says ACLGR’s Rodney Croome. “This is unfair to the soldiers involved because they may have to choose between their relationship and their career. It is also bad for the military because it has an adverse effect on both morale and the retention of highly trained personnel.” | Danish health minister and current F ormer European Parliament candidate Torben Lund, 49, married his boyfriend, soci ology student Claus Lautrup, 28, at Copenhagen City Hall March 13. Lund, a leader of the Social Democ ratic Party and the nation’s first openly gay cabinet-level official, is consid ered a shoo-in for the Euro Parliament Torben Lund seat. “A politician does not need courage to admit his homosexuality,” Lund told Agence France- Presse. “The important thing is to be natural, to behave like others, to love like other people, not to fear prejudice and rumors—and to show overtly that one is homosexual, because it is not an illness.” He added: “I am happy to live in an open- minded, free and tolerant country like Den mark, where homosexuals do not have to keep a low profile and where gay marriage does not cre ate a sensation.” Lund was twice married to women and has two daughters aged 23 and 14- But meeting Lautrup put an end to his heterosexual ways. “One shouldn’t hesitate to listen to the voice of the heart,” he said. “You only live once.” Denmark was the first country in the world to legalize marriagelike same-sex partnerships, in October 1989. Registered same-sex couples have all the rights of opposite-sex spouses except access to adoption, church weddings and artifi cial-conception procedures. There have been 4,338 same-sex marriages in Denmark during the past 11 years, according to AFP. In the earlier years, gay men were more likely to take advantage of the partnership law, but recently more lesbians than gay men have gotten married. Hanne Moeller, spokeswoman for Denmark’s National Association for Gays and Lesbians, speculates: “Women in the beginning were a bit skeptical of registered partnerships. They did not want to be too much like heterosexuals.... But now we have a new generation of lesbians who find it natural to have a family and to raise kids.” FRANCE n March 18, the French Senate rejected a measure passed by the National Assembly in December that granted unmarried couples— same-sex and opposite-sex, romantic or not— many of the rights and benefits of matrimony. The vote was 216-99. The senators approved an alternate proposal by a vote of 192-117 that recognizes only male- female cohab iting couples. The mea sure that passed the Assembly 316-249 on Dec. 9 would have granted same-sex couples rights in areas such as inheri tance, housing, taxation, workplace benefits, social security and social-welfare programs. O hundred protesters threw rocks and S everal tomatoes at Swedish photographer Elisabeth Ohlson March 14 when she stepped outside the city museum in Norrkoping, 75 miles southwest of Stockholm. The museum is showing her Ecce Homo exhibit, which depicts Jesus and the apostles in drag and as leathermen, and shows a nude Jesus being baptized. “I went out to document [with my camera] what was going on,” Ohlson says. “It was when they discovered it was me that the tumult began. I didn’t think they would recognize me.” Ohlson fled back inside. Local reports did not mention any injuries. Most of the protesters reportedly are mem bers of a Syrian Orthodox church. The exhibit has provoked protests in several cities where it has been displayed. Jon Voss, editor of the Stockholm gay newspaper QX, explains: “Two pic tures have caused most protests from the religious right: The Last Supper scene, where [Jesus] is sitting in high heels with 12 drag queens and transvestites. And one scene where he is baptized nude, showing his dick. This has caused uproar and a lot of From Ecce Homo laughs because the model in the picture has a big dick. The bishop of Uppsala...said the dick was erect, which the model, who works here at QX, denies.” UNITED KINGDOM ay and lesbian activists in the United Kingdom are denouncing the Bank of Scotland over a new partnership with Pat Robertson, a United States-based television preacher and former presidential candidate. The Scottish institution is launching a direct-banking subsidiary in the U.S. that will he 65 percent owned by the bank and 25 per cent owned by Robertson. Like the Bank of Scotland, it will have no branches, operating instead via mail, telephone and the Internet. Robertson is expected to pro mote the bank to members of the Christian Coalition and viewers of his 700 Club television program. “It seems amazing that such a respected insti tution would get into bed with someone like Pat Robertson, a man obsessed with knowing who everyone else is getting into bed with,” says Kevin Ivers, spokesman for the U.S. group Log Cabin Republicans, which has taken the lead stateside in opposing the venture. In a letter to angry customers, bank director of public relations Iain Fiddes explained: “To remain competitive and one of the UK’s leading banks, Bank of Scotland must seek innovative ways of expanding its markpt. The arrangement with Dr. Robertson falls into this category. It is based strictly on business credentials and com mercial logic like any other business develop ment. "Dr. Robertson is well known for his person al views, particularly on abortion and homosex uality,” Fiddes acknowledged. “Those views, as with the personal views held by all the people with whom we do business, do not determine the basis of their business relationship with the bank.” British study has found that gay men A new who are more educated are less likely to be HIV-positive. The survey questioned more than 4,000 men who attended pride festivals in London, Brighton, Bristol, Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds in 1997. Among respondents who stayed in school through age 22, 7.6 percent were HIV-positive. Those who went to school through age 20 showed a 9.7 percent positivity rate. The rate reached 11 percent for those who finished schooling at age 18, 11.9 percent for those who finished at 16, and 19 percent for those who quit school before 16. “I was gobsmacked when we got those results,” said Ford Hickson of Sigma Research, which conducted the survey. 238-6036 A WADDELL W S c REED The people with a plan for you. T he queer organization Our World Gay and Lesbian Center is apparently being denied government registration. The group’s application for government reg istration has been referred to the national Min istry of Justice for further review after local offi cials declined “to give a conclusion about the legality of the existence of citizens with anom alous sexual orientation.” Commenting on the situation, an Our World spokesman says: "Gays and lesbians were singled out into a separate group of persons and doubts were cast on the legality of their exis tence and the possibility for them to establish public associations of citizens. It was evident dis crimination of Ukrainian citizens on the ground of sexual orientation." A smart financial plan begins with just 7 numbers. V "Education gives you things," Hickson said in an interview with Gay Times. "And the more you have, the fewer needs you have. Education supplies you with choices. It increases your abil ity to pursue the choices that are available, it increases your competence in pursuing those choices, it increases the interpersonal and eco nomic resources you can call on, and it eases your uptake of information.” ■ Compiled by R ex W ockner WBÊBÊÊ Eric Brown District Manager 500 Northeast Multnomah Portland, OR 97232 503/238-6036 17