8 GAY PEOPLE's ChroNICLE JUNE 6, 1997

NEWS BRIEFS

Perry promises mass wedding if clergy fine passes

Los Angeles-A proposed Alabama law calling for a $1,000 fine for any clergy conducting a same-sex marriage has drawn a promise from the Rev. Troy Perry to be among the first arrested.

"The day any such bill passes the Alabama legislature," said Perry, founder of the gay and lesbian Metropolitan Community Church, "I will be on a plane for Montgomery where I will invite all of our pastors, as well as enlightened clergy from any other faith community, to join me on the steps of the Alabama Capitol for the largest mass wedding for the gay community ever seen in Alabama."

The bill, which has come before the Alabama State Senate in its last two sessions, proposes that any clergyman who officiates a gay marriage will be fined $1,000.

The bill has passed the House this year as well as a Senate subcommittee.

The MCC currently has congregations in Birmingham, Huntsville, Mobile, Montgomery and Tuscaloosa.

"Holy Union and Holy Marriage are rites and sacraments of all MCC congregations," said Perry. "I will serve time in jail before I will allow the government to dictate our religious practices."

Camp braces for Cameron visit

Ovett, Miss.-The women of Camp Sister Spirit, a lesbian-owned land collective, are bracing themselves for more controversy as Mississippi for Family Values prepares to bring a notorious anti-gay speaker to town.

The collective has faced repeated harassment in its three years of existence, including death threats, gun shots, and a dead dog hung over their mailbox.

Mississippi for Family Values and four local churches are sponsoring a local appearance June 7 by Paul Cameron, who has said that gays should be quarantined and has called the idea of exterminating gays "plausible." Cameron, a discredited psychologist who often testifies in court as a "expert witness," is famous for his graphic descriptions of pedophilia and bestiality that he says are a part of gay sex.

Co-owner Brenda Henson said that harassment usually increases after local fundamentalists hold discussions about homosexuality.

Job bias bill comes back to life

Salem, Ore.-Softening his opposition to a gay civil rights measure, Senate President Brady Adams says he will allow an alternate version of the employment protections bill to proceed through the Senate.

Adams, R-Grants Pass, had steadfastly refused to allow changes to the House measure that would have increased its chances of passage in the Senate.

Adams said he would likely form a special committee to consider the bill, further enhancing the likelihood that the measure, passed by the House in May, will make it to the Senate floor.

The original bill was introduced by Portland Rep. Chuck Carpenter, the legislature's only openly gay Republican, who joined Democrats to maneuver the bill through the House.

Carpenter has said his bill, with the necessary amendments, would have enough votes to pass the Republican-controlled, 30-member Senate. He said all ten Democrats and seven Republicans are lined up in support of the measure.

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'If I were elected God...

Madison, Wis-Rep. Mark Neumann told members of the Christian Coalition on June 1 that if a person came into his office looking for a job, and that person disclosed that they were gay, he would not hire them. "The gay and lesbian lifestyle [is] unacceptable," Neumann said.

Neumann's reasoning was that if the person was announcing they were gay, it meant that they had a hidden agenda that they would be pushing in his office.

"IfI was elected God for a day, homosexuality wouldn't be permitted, but nobody's elected me God," Neumann told the New York Times.

The Christian Coalitian had criticized Neumann for signing a pledge not to discriminate against gays on his office staff.

"The political consequences are not good for someone seeking statewide office in Wisconsin," said Richard Tafel, director of Log Cabin Republicans, which had asked Neumann to sign the pledge. “It looks like he is trying to play to both sides, and people don't like that," Tafel told the Milwaukee Journal.

"Wisconsin is one of eleven states with a law prohibiting discrimination in employment because of sexual orientation," said Wisconsin ACLU director Chris Ahmuty.

But Ahmuty wasn't sure how the Wisconsin discrimination law applied to members of Congress. In the past, members were considered exempt from federal anti-discrimination laws.

Actors guild gives AIDS drugs

Los Angeles-The Screen Actors Guild has begun paying for protease inhibitors for its members who have AIDS, becoming the first trade union to directly supply the drugs to its members.

Members must meet certain requirements to receive the drugs. They must have no health insurance, been a member of SAG for five years or longer, and have a physician's written diagnosis and prescription for the drugs.

A spokesman for AIDS Project Los Angeles estimated that the cost of the drugs would be as high as $16,000 per year for each patient.

No law against firing gays

Davenport, Iowa-State and federal authorities said there is nothing they can do to challenge the administrator of a home for the mentally disabled who admitted five months ago that that he fired several employees because of their sexual orientation.

In an interview with the Quad City Times, St. Katharine's Living Center administrator Roger Crow said, “When I first came here, there was probably at least three faggots working here and at least three dykes ... It was like, 'These people are gone.' [Gay people] are not a part of society as far as I'm concerned."

Formal complaints were filed last year by Carl McPherson, lowa's state ombudsman for long-term care, as a result to Crow's comments.

The lowa Civil Rights Commission says it cannot act on the complaint, since the state legislature has rejected adding sexual orientation to existing anti-discrimination law. The Inspector General for the U.S. Department for Health and Human Services said no action had been taken because the department's lowa office has been closed since 1995.

"This is not news to gay people in lowa," said John Schmacker, president of the Des Moines Gay and Lesbian Resource Center, who added that the government agencies were doing nothing more than “passing the buck."

"The very law lesbians and gay men need to have to be protected from job discrimination based on their sexual orientation has been rejected by our legislature two times in last five years."

United is first airline to buy ads

New York City-United Airlines has become the first major airline to advertise specifically to the gay market, according to the June 2 issue of Advertising Age. The airline is expected to run an ad in the June 10 edition of the Advocate and continue advertising in the gay and lesbian magazine through the fall.

"I wonder what took them so long," said Jim O'Donnell, chairman of consultancy Seabrook Marketing. “Gays and lesbians are an important audience, and they want to feel a sense of corporate welcome."

The announcement comes on the heels of United joining in an Air Transport Association lawsuit against the city of San Francisco, opposing a law that requires companies that do business with the city to provide benefits to the partners of gay and lesbian employees.

Joe Landry, national ad director at the Advocate, said the airline arranged to be in the magazine before the San Francisco issue came up.

American Airlines has sponsored a number of gay events in the past year, but has not advertised in lesbian-gay publications.

Churches oppose ordination ban

Milwaukee-The Milwaukee Presbytery this week became the first regional church body in the nation to announce its dissent to a recent Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) ban on ordaining gays and lesbians, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reported.

On May 27, a regional group of 51 congregations with more than 15,000 members, approved a "Covenant of Dissent" by a two-to-one margin. They voted to oppose an amendment to the church's constitution, approved in March, that stated: "Persons refusing to repent of any self-acknowledged practice which the confessions call sin shall not be ordained and/ or installed as deacons, elders, or ministers of the Word and Sacrament."

Since its passage, the governing bodies of 17 congregations have adopted a dissenting agreement recognizing the right of gay men and lesbians to be installed as elders, deacons and ministers.

Fred Jenkins, of the national church in Louisville, Ky., said the Milwaukee presbytery is the first regional group of congregations to inform the denomination it had adopted the dissenting covenant.

Jenkins added that the national church body had warned dissenting congregations in a letter that the covenant might subject them to legal action in church courts.

Sheriff's chaplain quits

San Rafael, Calif.-A minister who quit a clergy group after learning that a member is a lesbian has resigned his post as a Marin County sheriff's chaplain.

Sheriff Robert Doyle requested the resignation of Rev. W. Lee Grady after the minister made disparaging comments about a lesbian pastor to the Marin Independent Journal. Doyle added that had Grady not agreed to resign, he would have been removed.

"The bottom line is, he made some public comments which were contrary to our organization's philosophy," Doyle said.

Grady made the comments after he and at least two other ministers quit their group when they learned that Rev. Marilyn Hedges-Hiller is a lesbian. The ministers left after a the majority decided that Hedges-Hiller could remain in the group.

"Our action is not an action of love. It is an action of hoping that individuals who walk in this way will see their sin and turn around," Grady said at the time. "This lady, if she were living a clean life, my goodness, she would be welcome like all of us," he added.

Compiled by Tom Rappa, Dawn Leach, and Doreen Cudnik.