rrnrrmnews
14
T he F inal C ountdown
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Millennium fever has folks making lists and tallying superlatives—
here's a roster of the year's biggest gay news stories by Rawley Grau
ress Pass Q: A Newsletter for the Gay
& Lesbian Press Professional recently
polled its subscribers about the most
important gay-related news stories of
1999. More than 80 people—publish
ers, editors and reporters at gay and lesbian
newspapers and magazines from across the coun
try—offered their insights. Here are their top 10
stories:
P
1. M atthew S hepard ’ s
M urderers C onvicted
early eight months after Matthew Shepard
was beaten and left on a fence to die out
side Laramie, Wyo., Russell Hen
derson, 22, one of the two
accused
killers,
surprised
observers by pleading guilty
before the start of his trial
on April 5 to the kid
napping and murder of
the 21 -year-old gay
college student.
Then the trial
of
Henderson’s
accomplice, Aaron
McKinney,
22,
took place in late
October,
with
McKinney’s attor
T/
neys resorting to a
“gay panic” defense.
They argued that their
client had attacked Shep
ard in a drug-induced rage
after the gay man tried to
grope him. The judge
rejected this line of rea
soning, and on Nov. 3 the
jury found McKinney guilty
on two counts of felony
murder and one count
each of second-degree
murder, kidnapping and
aggravated robbery.
In a plea bargain, McKinney was spared the
death penalty, receiving instead a sentence of
two consecutive life terms in exchange for
agreeing to waive his right to appeal.
Shepard’s parents had asked the prosecutor
not to seek McKinney’s execution, calling
instead for a time of healing to begin.
N
I'»»,*-è
gp
merit badges and rising to the rank of Eagle
Scout.
The Boy Scouts of America intends to
appeal the New Jersey ruling in the U.S.
Supreme Court.
3. C anadian S upreme
C ourt R edefines ‘S pouse ’
n May 20, the Supreme Court of Canada
ruled in an 8-1 decision that Ontario’s
Family Law Act infringed on the Canadian
Charter of Rights and Freedoms by restricting its
definition of spouse to people who are actually
married or “either of a man and woman who are
not married to each other and
have cohabited...continuous
ly for a period of not less than
three years.”
The case, M vs. H,
involved a woman
who was seeking
spousal
support
from her former
partner, another
woman.
The
Supreme
Court
teii’D«
a TO I .'TO i
gave Ontario six
months to remove
the heterosexual
definition of spouse
from its laws.
On Oct. 27, the Par
liament of Ontario
revised 67 statutes, thus
extending to same-sex
couples all the rights and
responsibilities enjoyed by
common-law heterosexual
couples, including those
pertaining to breakups,
adoption and hospital vis
itation.
O
F irst
n June 4, while Congress was taking a
10-day break for Memorial Day, President
Clinton used his recess appointment privilege to
name James Hormel as ambassador to the Grand
Duchy of Luxembourg, making Hormel the first
openly gay U.S. ambassador.
The move came in defiance of Senate
N ew J ersey C ourt
Majority Leader Trent Lott, who, despite the
O verturns S couts P olicy nomination having been approved by the For
eign Relations Committee, had refused to allow
n a unanimous decision Aug. 4, the New Jer it to come to a vote on the Senate floor, where
sey Supreme Court upheld a lower court rul it was expected to win confirmation.
ing that the Boy Scouts of America had violat
Lott and the conservative Republican lead
ed the state’s civil rights law when it expelled ership claimed that Hormel, a businessman and
Assistant Scoutmaster James Dale in 1990 philanthropist, was unsuitable because he
because he is gay.
appeared in a gay pride parade with the Sisters
It was the first time a state’s high court ruled of Perpetual Indulgence, a group of gay men
against the Scouts’ anti-gay policy. The court dressed as nuns. Clinton had first nominated
said that because the Boy Scouts of America is Hormel to the post in 1997.
nonselective in its membership and receives
support from state and local governments, it
cannot exempt itself from the state’s civil rights
B ritain E nds B an
law governing places of public accommodation,
and therefore cannot discriminate on the basis on G ays in the M ilitary
of sexual orientation.
he European Court of Human Rights in
Dale, 29, had been involved in scouting for
Strasbourg, France, found on Sept. 27 that
12 years before his expulsion, winning many the United Kingdom’s ban on gays and lesbians
2.
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4. H ormel B ecomes
G ay A mbassador
5.