FEBRUARY 25, 1994 GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE 3

Amnesty to focus on anti-gay human rights abuses

by Gene Kramer Washington-Amnesty International declared February 8 it was taking on a new task, actively defending gays and lesbians against human rights abuses.

At the same time, Amnesty International USA, the U.S. branch of the London-based global human rights organization, launched a six-month campaign in the United States to combat mistreatment of lesbians and gay men, specifically in the five states with gayonly sodomy laws.

Amnesty defends victims of political, religious and ethnic persecution, torture, violence and discrimination.

Amnesty released a survey on treatment of gays and lesbians in the United States and 23 other countries which it said placed "government repression of gay men and

lesbians squarely on the international human rights agenda."

Curt Goering, acting director of Amnesty USA, told a reporter the move is long overdue and that his organization wants to elevate gay human rights as a mainstream issue to such bodies as the U.N. Human Rights Commission and the general public,

Amnesty's international council decided in August, 1991, at Yokohama, Japan, to take up lesbian-gay rights. Exhaustive investigations showed that gays and lesbians, like political prisoners traditionally defended by Amnesty, are "vulnerable to the pretexts governments use to lock people up," Goering said.

Sexual orientation is not mentioned in the 1948 U.N. Declaration of Human Rights but gays and lesbians are implicitly protected, and Amnesty wants to ensure that

N.Y. mayor straddles fence on Gay Games

New York-Differences of opinion over such issues as sexuality and this June's Gay Games don't have to turn into hatred among New Yorkers, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said.

He said February 18 that people can have honest disagreements about the morality of gay and lesbian conduct.

The mayor's comments came after three City Council members requested he “immediately and fully condemn" statements by the Rev. Ruben Diaz, one of his supporters, who has spoken out against the Gay Games sporting event to be held in the city.

A letter to the mayor on the subject was signed by City Council members Thomas Duane, C. Virginia Fields and Guillermo Linares, all of Manhattan.

Diaz had written an article in Impacto, a Hispanic weekly newspaper, complaining that the games would attract gay and lesbian athletes who "are likely to be already infected with AIDS or (who) can return home with the virus."

The South Bronx minister said millions of people, including children, would see the

games on television or in person, leading them to conclude that if there are so many gay athletes, that "then there is nothing wrong, nor any risks involved."

Giuliani said on Friday that "one view in this city is that gay and lesbian sexuality is immoral" and that "a large percentage of people have that view."

"You don't have to agree with that. You can think that view is fundamentally wrong, incorrect, flawed, or whatever."

But the mayor said "it is a legitimate thing people have a right to say, have a right to argue. They have a right to try to persuade people of that."

Giuliani said he expected 100,000 to 200,000 athletes to participate, and he expects to officiate at some ceremonies.

The Gay Games, a 10-day sporting event, are expected to draw athletes from 40 countries June 18-25. They previously had been held in San Francisco and Vancouver, British Columbia. A 25th-anniversary celebration of Stonewall will be held at the Games' conclusion.

Group says gays might fall through holes in health plan

Washington-The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force called for changes in President Clinton's health plan February 14 to ensure that gay people are not discriminated against either as doctors or patients. The group applauded Clinton's commitment to universal coverage, but expressed concern that his bill "does not make the health-care system safer for lesbians, gay men or bisexuals."

It said the Clinton plan "discriminates financially against non-traditional families" by defining a family as a married couple or a single parent with children.

A gay couple with a child and big health bills could wind up paying $4,500 in deductibles compared with $3,000 for a traditional family, the task force said.

The gay task force urged that explicit language barring discrimination based on sexual orientation be added throughout the 1,342-page Clinton bill.

The group called for strong protections against "geographic redlining and enrollment limitations" against people with the AIDS virus as well as those living in poverty.

It expressed concern that "people living in areas with high rates of poverty and-or disease (San Francisco, New York, Washington, D.C.) could have higher premium rates and fewer health plans willing to operate in that area."

It criticized Clinton's conscience clause

that would let a health professional or facility refuse to perform a service due to a religious belief or moral conviction.

That language, intended to allow doctors to refuse to perform abortions, "is so vague the possibilities for abuses are great," the task force said.

The task force also contended that the plan's coverage of pap smears and mammograms was too restrictive, and urged that lesbians as a group be designated as medically underserved to encourage health plans to enroll them.

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"what is implicit in language is explicit in public of the former Soviet Union to de-

practice," he said.

Amnesty said it considers "prisoners of conscience" anyone detained for peacefully advocating gay rights or "solely because of homosexuality" including private sexual acts between consenting adults.

Five U.S. states apply anti-sodomy laws only to homosexuals, and "Amnesty International would consider an individual imprisoned under these laws a prisoner of conscience and call for their immediate and unconditional release," the organization said. The states are Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, Montana and Tennessee.

The report surveyed two dozen countries showing that abuses against gays and lesbians are widespread in the world.

It said Ukraine has become the first re-

criminalize homosexual acts between adult males. Similar steps are taking place or being considered in Russia, the three Baltic republics and elsewhere in the former USSR.

Mistreatment of gay men by police is frequently alleged in Britain and Northern Ireland, it said. Amnesty welcomed the introduction of legislation in the Irish Republic decriminalizing private homosexual acts between consenting adults.

In major cities and towns of Colombia, there are reports of gay men, vagrant children and petty criminals being rounded up as "social undesirables" and gunned down by police-supported "death squads," the survey found. In several Islamic countries, gay men are given death sentences.

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