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Even though the Boy Scouts already have equal access to schools, Van Hilleary (center)
figures it can’t hurt to be prepared
N A TIO N A L
he Human Rights Campaign derided
House passage May 23 of an anti-gay
amendment sponsored by Rep. Van Hilleary,
R-Tenn., prohibiting federal funding to public
schools that deny access of facilities to the Boy
Scouts of America, despite the fact that the law
already guarantees the organization equal access.
A companion measure in the Senate was intro
duced by Jesse Helms, R-N.C.
“This was an empty, mean-spirited gesture,”
said Winnie Stachelberg, HRC political direc
tor. “These bankrupt measures will accomplish
nothing concrete or substantial in the policy
arena and are vivid examples of political grand-
standing by anti-gay politicians.... This is really
nothing more than a punishment in search of a
problem.”
To gain support for his amendment, Hilleary
issued a letter to his colleagues on Capitol Hill
that mistakenly said schools routinely deny
access to the Scouts. Reps. Bill Delahunt,
D-Mass., and Connie Morelia, R-Md., wrote to
lawmakers to address the error.
Hilleary’s letter “might lead you to believe
that such exclusion is lawful and commonplace,
and it is not,” they said. “A selective denial of
equal access is unlawful. And no school district
has ever successfully barred the Boy Scouts from
using school facilities that are open to all.”
Helms said on the Senate floor last month
that “radical militants” were trying to ban the
Boy Scouts from campuses. He also said gay
activists “demand that everybody else’s princi
ples must be cast aside in order to protect the
right of homosexual conduct.”
T
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->
ealth Secretary Tommy G. Thompson
announced May 15 the release of A Guide
to the Clinical C are o f W omen with HIV, thought
to be the first medical manual specifically writ
ten for this population. The publication pro
vides practical, experience-based advice and
authoritative treatment guidelines for clinicians
treating women with HIV.
“This new manual could not be more time
ly,” Thompson said. "H IV infection among
women has become the fifth-leading cause of
death among women between the ages of 25 and
44. Information in this guide will help clinicians
improve treatment and save the lives of HIV
positive women and their babies.”
Recent statistics confirm H IV’s increasing
threat to women. O f the 43,517 new cases in the
United States reported from July 1999 through
June 2000, 24 percent were among women.
Even more ominously, in the 32 states with
confidential HIV reporting, women between 13
and 24 years old comprise more than half of the
H
new cases of H IV infection. In 1985, by con
trast, women represented just 6 percent of the
reported 10,000 U .S. A ID S cases.
The virus can be especially tragic for preg
nant women. Many women learn they are HIV
positive only after giving birth to an infant with
HIV, yet diagnosis and treatment before birth
almost always can prevent transmission of the
virus to the newborn.
KANSAS
he Kansas Court of Appeals has ruled that
judges must consider a wide range of factors
and not focus solely on sex at birth when deter
mining the legal gender of a person who has had
a sex-change operation. The decision came
May 11 as the court considered the validity of
the marriage of J ’Noel Gardiner, a trans woman,
to her husband, Marshall.
The marriage essentially was voided after his
death, when his estranged son successfully chal
lenged the union in a dispute over the estate.
The trial court ruled that Gardiner’s prior sex
change would not be recognized and that her
marriage was invalid
because she was bom a
male
and
unions
between people of the
same sex are not legal
in Kansas.
The appeals court
reversed that decision,
giving a detailed review
of scientific literature
and rejecting what it
called “a rigid and sim
plistic approach” to defining trans people. Rec
ognizing the “diverse composition of today’s
families,” it noted that biology is “no longer the
sole organizing principle” of family life in the
United States.
“This decision recognizes what transgender
people have known for a long time: that some
people’s sex is not determined by their anatomy
at birth,” said Jennifer Middleton of Lambda
Legal Defense and Education Fund. “It is very
encouraging to see this court focus on medical
knowledge and the reality of people’s lives rather
than old-fashioned, narrow notions of what it is
to be a man or a woman.”
T
M IN N E S O TA
state court struck down Minnesota’s law
prohibiting oral and anal sex May 18. The
American Civil Liberties Union hailed the rul
ing and vowed to defend its statewide impact if
Gov. Jesse Ventura’s administration steps in and
tries to limit it to the individual plaintiffs in the
case.
“This is a tremendous victory— because of
A