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September 24th, 1997 to September 30th, 1997

National Roundup

In Augusta, Maine, last Thursday, gay-rights foes presented 58,750 voters' signatures on petitions-7,619 more than required-demanding a referendum on the state's gay-rights law, which had been scheduled to go into effect the next day. Christian Coalition of Maine leader Paul Volle said opponents believe the anti-discrimination legislation "confers special rights to homosexuals" and disregards the rights of "people of faith," according to the Associated Press. If the signatures stand up to official verification, rights opponents will have the so-called people's veto referendum later this fall. Karen Geraghty, former president of the Maine Lesbian-Gay Political Alliance, said she was surprised that anti-rights volunteers had garnered so many signatures, but "remained confident" that Maine voters would uphold the rights law. "I'm angry because we have to go through another referendum, and I'm disappointed because groups of fundamentalist Christians are unwilling to accept that the law has been [enacted]," Geraghty added. Activists had worked two decades for the legislation that's now on hold; the special balloting must be held after November but before next April.
In 1996, the number of new diagnoses of AIDS cases dropped for the first time since the epidemic began 16 years ago, reported The New York Times on Sept. 19. The death rate also fell by 23%. However, case numbers among minority men and women continue to climb, according to Centers for Disease Control HIV/AIDS chief Dr. Patricia Fleming. In 1996, Americans over 13 accounted for 56,730 new AIDS cases, a six percent decline from 1995. From 1992 to 1995, cases had increased an average of two percent per year. AIDS incidence among gay men and IV drug users continues to diminish, although hikes of 11% for heterosexual men and 7% for heterosexual women were registered in the new data, which tends to mirror AIDS epidemic patterns in the developing world-to officials' dismay. "This announcement is a sober wake-up call to Americans that heterosexual AIDS is not a myth," said James Loyce of AIDSProject Los Angeles. Yet gay men still account for almost 50% of all HIV/AIDS cases. More than a quarter of a million Americans are currently living with AIDS.
The Securities and Exchange Commission voted unanimously Sept. 18 to recommend adopting a policy that makes it easier for company shareholders to compel stockholder votes on social policy questions, including employment discrimination against gays and lesbians. The recommendation reverses earlier SECdecisions concerning the infamous Cracker Barrel Restaurant discrimination-based 1991 firings of gay and lesbian employees, reported NewsPlanet and the Associated Press. When activists bought Cracker Barrel stock and tried to put an anti-discrimination initiative on the shareholder meeting agenda, the SEC told Cracker Barrel it did not have to publish the proposal to shareholders. The new SEC ruling may finally quell the on-going controversy. Public comment on "File No. S7-25-97" may be submitted for 60 days, to Chairman Arthur Levitt, Securities and Exchange Commission, Judiciary Plaza, 450 5th St. NW, Washington, D.C. 20549; phone (202) 942-4150; email <rule-comment@sec.gov>.
New York Board of Elections confirmed Sept. 17 that Puerto Rican lesbian and longtime progressive activist Margarita Lopez has won the hotly contested Democratic primary for the District 2 (Lower East Side) seat on the New York City Council. Election night, Sept. 9, media relied on unofficial results and declared Lopez' opponent the winner; however, a recount showed Lopez a clear winner. Her "long-shot" candidacy is supported by the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund. To support Lopez in the Nov. 4 general election, send checks payable to "friends of Margarita Lopez" to the Victory Fund, 1012 14th St. NW, Suite 1000, Washington, D.C. 20005. The Victory fund is also backing Phil Reed, who is running for the District 8 Council seat (East Harlem, Manhattan Valley, Mott Haven area).
In other New York primary races, Rev. Al Sharpton narrowly lost to out-going Manhattan Borough President Ruth Messinger, but Sharpton is suing to force a run-off for the Democratic mayoral position. Messinger is the mother of a lesbian. In the race to replace Messinger, Democratic African-American social worker Virginia Fields soundly defeated apparent frontrunner Deborah Glick, the Greenwich Village district's State Rep. and the first open lesbian elected to the New York legislature, as well as Antonio Pagan, another openly gay candidate and former City Councilmember.
In an unprecedented action, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 289-64 in passing a resolution banning former California Republican Rep. Bob Dornan from the House floor. Reuters reports that Dornan was roundly criticized even by Republicans after he engaged in a "bitter verbal altercation" last Wednesday with Rep. Robert Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat. Witnesses confirmed that Dornan "used insults and profanity" and tried to "lure [Menendez] off the floor into a physical altercation." Loudly ultraconservative and anti-gay, Dornan is challenging the Nov. 1996 election in which he lost to Democrat Loretta Sanchez by 984 votes. Igniting heated controversy, Dornan has claimed that unregistered Hispanics-"illegal aliens"-cast the illegal votes electing Sanchez, a daughter of Mexican immigrants. However, banning Dornan from the chamber may have no effect on his election challenge, which many Republicans support.
Down the Capitol hall, moderate Senators have voted to preserve the funding and structure of the National Endowment for the Arts. The House has slashed all funding to the NEA in their 1998 appropriations measures. The two bodies' diametrically opposed NEA funding decisions will be reconciled in House-Senate conference. Carol Shields, President of People For the American Way Action Fund, praised the Senators and called the NEA-affirming vote "a temporary defeat for the Religious Right ... [which has succeeded] only in stealing the benefits of a vibrant arts culture throughout America."
The Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund has endorsed Wisconsin State Rep. Tammy Baldwin, a Democrat, in her run for the 2nd District Congressional seat of retiring four-term Republican Scott Klug. Baldwin would make history as the first open lesbian to serve in the U.S. Congress, if elected in 1998. Campaign contributions should be made to the "Baldwin for Congress Committee," and mailed to the Victory Fund at 1012 14th St. NW, Suite 1000, Washington, D.C. 20005. Contact the Victory Fund at (202) 842-8679 or email VictoryF@aol.com.
Last week in Richmond, Virginia, pretrial hearings began for three lesbian roommates and another woman charged with various murder, abduction, and robbery counts in the bludgeoning death of Stacey Hanna, 19, whose battered body was recovered from a Chesterfield County woods on July 27. The Associated Press reports that accused lesbians Domica Winkler, 18, Tracy Bitner, 19, and Kelly Tibbs, 18, "were involved romantically with one another," and that investigators believe Hanna's subsequent romance with one of the women upset the household and spurred the women to beat Hanna, ultimately to death. The fourth alleged accomplice, Stephanie Cull, 18, has been indicted on slightly lesser charges.
In Jackson County, Ore., a jury trial began Tuesday to determine whether Robert Acremant, 29, would receive the death penalty or life in prison for the December 1995 execution-style slayings of a Medford lesbian couple, Roxanne Ellis, 53, and Michelle Abdill, 42. Turned in by his mother, Acremant confessed to three murders altogether; in the Medford case, he pled guilty to two counts of aggravated murder. Ellis and Abdill were bound and shot after they refused to write a check to Acremant when he demanded money during an appointment to view a rental house. The women had worked for lesbigay rights in Oregon, and the Abdill-Ellis Lambda Community Center created in Ashland after their deaths memorializes them. A former Los Angeles accountant, Acremant was unemployed and drinking heavily at the time of the murders. His later claims of a homophobic motive in the slayings have been discounted as "headline grabbing" by authorities.
Sunday, the Chicago Tribune reported that a group of Chicago-based physicians is volunteering to be "human guinea pigs to test a vaccine made with a live strain of HIV." The weakened virus would be administered to 50 study participants, including Chicago doctors Joe Zuniga, Gordon Nary, and Andrew Pavlatos. Ideally, the virus would excite an immune reaction, and the volunteers would develop effective antibodies to HIV. Leaders of the international Association of Physicians in AIDS Care will meet next week with National Institute of Health officials to discuss the proposed study. They are also seeking FDA approval for the study. Other current vaccine research has avoided using the live virus because of its extraordinary potency, but a live virus vaccine is probably the best bet for success. The danger of such a clinical study is that the volunteers might simply become HIV+ without developing any immunity.
In Washington, D.C., Sen. Carol Moseley-Braun renewed her criticism of another U.S.-funded AIDS research study already underway. Braun first critiqued the contested research in an April 30 letter to President Clinton, expressing concern over experiments "being conducted in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean on the effectiveness of a medication [AZT] that may prevent the transmission of the virus that causes AIDS from mothers to their children." More than 12,000 women in seven countries are involved. Braun compares the third world experiments to the infamous Tuskegee Syphilis Study. Last week, the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine joined Braun in critiquing the the studies, which involve withholding AZT treatment from pregnant women with AIDS, apparently violating World Health Organization ethical guidelines and placing as many as 1,000 children at risk for AIDS. "Unfortunately, the ethical lessons we should have learned from the Tuskegee experiment may not have been absorbed," said Sen. Moseley-Braun, agreeing with the prestigious journal's editorial. The New York Times covered the issue on page one Sept. 18.
Arizona prison officials have refused to change a discriminatory policy banning such displays of affection as handholding and hugging between inmates and same-sex visitors, despite pressure from gay state legislators, national lesbigay activists and prisoners' rights advocacy groups. Arizona Corrections Director Terry Stewart said the rule is based on Arizona's prohibition of same-sex marriage and another statute promoting "strong families and family values," according to the Associated Press. Stewart claims "The policy is directed at all people regardless of their sexual preference." But Jenny Pizer of the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund observed that "The prison rules don't say that you can only have visitation if you're married. ... And so they're treating gay people differently without any good reason." Lambda is a monitoring the situation, but fears suing the Corrections Dept. may work against Arizona prisoners' best interests.
Last Tuesday, the Kansas Court of Appeals began hearing the case of Max Movsovitz, whose American Civil Liberties Union lawyers are arguing that the state sodomy code violates the equal protection clause and the privacy rights of gay men and lesbians. Movsovitz was arrested in 1995 for "solicitation of sodomy" by an undercover officer and convicted under that state code "which prohibits two people of the same gender from soliciting or engaging in any form of sexual intimacy," according to a GLAAD press release.
The San Diego Union-Tribune reported Friday that Republican Gov. Pete Wilson had prevailed upon University of California President Richard Atkinson to delay extension of healthcare benefits to same-sex domestic partners of faculty and staff. After a Board of Regents meeting, activists were sure the Board supports the benefits plan; Atkinson is empowered to implement it-or to delay implementation-without their approval. But Regent John Davies relayed Wilson's desire for the Regents to vote on the measure in November. Atkinson said "the best interests of the university" would be served by additional debate.
Rodney Wilson, founder of Lesbian & Gay History Month, will be the featured guest when the Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network and the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation hold a global Town Meeting on gay.com to celebrate by examining political struggle, cultural achievements, and collective creativity in the queer community. Go to http://www.gay.com/pages/glaad.html or http://www.glaad.org/glaad/history-month/chat.html on Oct. 1, at 9 p.m. CST.
Queer youth are "far more likely to attempt suicide" than are heterosexual young men, University of Minnesota researchers found by reanalyzing a 1987 survey of 660 young people, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune reported in August. Twenty-eight percent of gay/bisexual males had attempted suicide, as had just four percent of straight males-a statistically significant difference. The rate difference between young lesbian/bisexual females who had tried to kill themselves (20%) and their straight counterparts (14.5%) was statistically insignificant.
The senior pastor of Omaha, Nebraska's largest United Methodist church, Rev. Jimmy Creech, performed a lesbian couple's commitment ceremony Sept. 13 even though Nebraska Bishop Joel Martinez had ordered him not to in July, according to the Omaha World Herald. Martinez could file an official complaint against Creech, but probably won't, said a spokesman; any Methodist pastor or lay person could still lodge a complaint, and possible sanctions of "suspension, leave of absence or surrender of ministerial credentials" could result.

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