n \lational/International News .esbian Judge Sworn In loston, MA - Linda E. Giles, was sworn n as a Boston Municipal Court judge on )ecember 17, 1991, joining a handful of tpenly lesbian judges around the country, ncluding two in San Francisco. Giles has lone legal advocacy work in the gay and esbian community, including work for Gay and Lesbian Advocates and De- enders, a Boston-based public interest aw firm. (Gay Community News) kudre Lorde Named Official State ?oet Albany, NY - Audre Lorde was named he Official State Poet of New York on November 13 by Governor Mario Cuo- mo. Cuomo, in naming Lorde, said her appointment was on behalf of “all the poets of the oppressed, disenfranchised and silenced peoples within this state.” Lorde told the Washington Blade that the fact a black lesbian was chosen in a state “where a black woman can be raped and sodimized and her white college student attackers be freed in court; a place where date rape and street violence against les- bians and gay men is on the increase is an inherent contradiction. We must find ways to use the best we have in ourselves to bridge these contradictions to learn the lessons they teach.” (Washington Blade & Gay Community News) Federal Judge Upholds Stel'fan’s Ex- pulsion Washington, D.C. - In the lastest ruling on the expulsion of former Navy lvfid- shipman Joseph Steffan from the U.S. Naval Academy a few weeks before he was due to graduate, Judge Oliver Gasch upheld the Defense Department policy banning openly gay, lesbian and bisexual people. Steffan was forced to resign from the school in May 1987 after he disclosed ins sexual orientation to an academy zhaplain. In his latest ruling, Gasch suprised even the Defense Department by raising the is- sue of AIDS, an arguement even the Pen- tagon has never used in defending its pol- icy of exclusion. Gasch ruled that the ban on lesbians and gays was justified to pre- vent the spread of AIDS. Gasch’s prej- udice against lesbians and gays was made very clear during previous hearing on the Steffan case in the spring of 1991, when he referred to Steffan as a “homo” three times during the course of the hearings. Senator Brock Adams (D-WA) and Rep- resentative Barbara Boxer (D-CA) have introduced resolutions in Congress to re- scind the Department of Defense policy. Senators Cranston, Akaka, Inouye and Wirth have joined Adams as co—sponsors of the Senate resolution. The House res- olution has 39 co—sponsors. Adams crit- icized Gasch’s ruling, likening it to “flim- sy arguments previously used to ban African-Americans and women from serving in the armed forces. Those pol- icies had nothing to do with conduct or performance. They had everything to do with prejudice.” Lambda Legal Defense & Education Fund attomeys plan an appeal. (New York Times, NGLTF) Patricia Ireland, NOW’s New Pres- ident Washington, D.C. - In an interview in the December 17 issue of The Advocate, Pa- tricia Ireland, the new president of the National Organization for Women (NOW), discussed her relationship with a woman “companion.” In a wide ranging interview, Ireland said that her husband of 25 years lives in Miami and she has been living with a woman companion for the last four years in Washington, D.C. She refused to label herself as lesbian or bisexual or provide any details about her February 1992 personal life, saying, “I have not used la- bels most of my life.” Ireland did re- iterate her respect for lesbians and gays who are publically out, “I think its an very important strategy. We’ve had a very strong policy in NOW of respecting people’s privacy, and in my own par- ticular life, the privacy of my family and friends is really important to me.” Ireland went on to discuss NOW’s infamous purge of lesbians in 1970 by Betty Frei- dan and the strides NOW has made since then to incorporate lesbians back into its activities and concerns. NOW’s lesbian rights coordinator estimates that lesbians make up 30-40% of the total member- ship. (The Advocate, Newsweek, USA TODAY) Gays to be Added to Canada's Human Rights Act Ontario, Canada - The Ontario high court has ordered the federal government of Canada to add protections for lesbians and gays to the Canadian Human Rights Act. Judge Joseph McDonald ruled that the Human Rights act, by failing to pro- hibit discrimination on the basis of sex- ual orientation violates the constitutional rights of lesbians and gays under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which states that “every individual is equal be- fore and under the law and has the right to equal protection and equal benefit of the law without discrimination.” The rul- ing came as the result of the case of an Air Force captain who disclosed he was gay and then was told that he would no longer qualify for promotion, postings, or further training. “With no career op- portunity left to him, Captaiain Birch was released from the Armed Forces on med- ical grounds, and seeking some kind of redresss he turned to the Canadian Hu- man Rights Act, only to find that ...(it) does not cover discrimination based on sexual orientation.“ (Washington BIade)V 4317» Member National Lesbian and Gay Law Association ROBERT W. 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