CAPITAL COVERAGE NEWS SERVICE
media in the public interest
Amnesty Embraces
Issue 3 Repeal
Human Rights Group Expands Gay Outreach
Here and Abroad
by John Zeh - CapCoverag@aol.com
CINCINNATI (Nov. 9) - Halloween was a festive homecoming for
gay human rights organizer Michael Heflin. The incoming director
of Amnesty International's newly-reborn LGBT project was involved
in gay political work here while getting his law degree at the
University of Cincinnati, so he relished returning to the Queen
City - but not without reservations.
Heflin and over 250 others explored critical human rights issues at Amnesty's Midwest Regional Conference here Oct. 30 - Nov. 1 hosted by UC's College of Law. Re-energizing Amnesty's low-profile project aimed at documenting abuse against homosexuals worldwide was one of the session's timely topics. Others included "stun technology," juvenile justice, "Super-max" prisons, refugees, and the death penalty.
After four years as deputy director of Amnesty's Midwest office in Chicago, Heflin has moved to New York City to jump-start a more pro-active LGBT undertaking. "I'm really excited," he said during the group's trick-and-treat party at the earthy-yet-opulent Off the Avenue gallery in a booming Northside neighborhood.
"By working on gay issues in America," he said, "we'll be able to reach out to people of good conscience who may not be gay, but have the ability to transcend who they are. We must get people in the U.S. to see that gay issues are human rights issues around the world." In the background, The Modulators played "Sex on a Regular Basis," noting that the early '80's hit is now about "safer sex."
Heflin said he will work to re-name and expand the mission of Amnesty's "Members for Lesbian and Gay Concerns" caucus. It was started in 1990 as a loose network of individuals seeking to strengthen work on behalf of people persecuted for their sexual orientation. "Amnesty can add something special to the work of LGBT groups in America," Heflin said, "and help bolster their credibility."
Amnesty is a worldwide human rights organization working to promote understanding and adherence to international human rights standards. It works to free prisoners of conscience of all ages jailed solely for their beliefs, race, sex, sexual orientation, or ethnic origin. Beneficiaries must have neither used nor advocated violence. Amnesty seeks fair, prompt trials while working to abolish all torture and executions.
In early October, it underscored commitments to vigorously fighting against U.S. domestic human rights abuses in the U.S. Amnesty's work has "always been identified as off in Nigeria or Afghanistan," Ursaline Academy senior Suzanne Platt told another reporter. "Now it's in the face of everyone in every town."
Sexual orientation is included in Amnesty's organizational development plan for re-defining the group has a viable multi-cultural force around the world.
Heflin, as a fellow at UC's Urban Morgan Institute on Human Rights during his UC studies, interned at Stonewall Cincinnati. He says he is ready to "help bolster" the gay rights group's new grass-roots coalition now in formation that will push to repeal Issue 3.
Progressive LGBT activists here who feel they were cut out of Equality Cincinnati mainstream work against Issue 3 in the mid-'90's welcome new breath to resuscitate that early effort into an inclusive campaign open to all. (See "Conscientious Objector - A new Stonewall" by Michael Blakenship, Everybody's News, Nov. 5, 1998, www.everybody-news.com.)
The City Charter amendment, passed by 62 percent of voters here in 1993, overturned protections for lesbians, gays, and bisexuals in the city's Human Rights Ordinance. It forever banned any new measures protecting LGB rights. The U.S. Supreme Court on Nov. 13 declined to hear an appeal of the 6th Circuit Court's ruling upholding the Charter amendment, unique in the U.S.
At a workshop on "International Human Rights of (LGBT) Persons" attended by some 30 people, Heflin offered a "snapshot" of Issue 3's implications. "It was a really terrible decision for the U.S. Supreme Court not to review the case," he said. Heflin, a native of Kalamazoo, MI, knows that the high court's "non-decision," affects his home state and others in the 6th Circuit, including Tennessee and Kentucky, where anti-gay forces are expected to "import" Issue 3 clones.
"Issue 3," he explained, "not only took away gay rights, but makes it impossible to pass new (rules) protecting our class status." It leaves in doubt, for example, passage of Councilmember Todd Portune's proposed inclusion of gays in local hate-crimes legislation.
Heflin deftly mapped Amnesty's birth of gay awareness back to 1974 when members moved to change the group's mandate to include people in prison for being gay. Later, in 1979 when Amnesty declared that imprisonment for merely advocating gay rights would become an issue it would address. Not until 1997 did delegates to Amnesty's conference in South Africa vote to insist on increased research on human rights violations against gays. It also okayed increased visibility of pro-active gay-related work, he noted.
His workshop reported on abuses of LGBT prisoners in the U.S., Central America, Guatemala, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Ethiopia. Said presenter Heather McClure of the Midwest Human Rights Partnership for Sexual Orientation, "We're all part of a wider web." She reported torture by police, forced psychiatric treatment, death threats, and murder. "People are kicked out of housing and denied health care, but mistreatment is not always visible. LBGT people are pushing gender norms," she said, and paying dearly for it.
It took the October murder of gay Wyoming student Matthew Shepard to move Amnesty to make its first public statement about gay concerns. It called on the U.S. and states to "take necessary measures to ensure protection of the fundamental human rights of all its citizens" as required by international standards.
"Matthew's death shocked and mobilized people, but many already knew earlier horrific example of anti-gay hate crimes in (our) neighborhoods in Chicago and New York City," Heflin said. "We must continue to raise the level of awareness in the broader human rights community to get other organizations involved" in gay rights," he challenged the delegates. "They haven't embraced this."
The local Amnesty chapter meets on the second Sunday of
each month at 1 pm at Mt. Auburn Presbyterian Church. Call 221-7659
for information.
##
Journalist John Zeh covered Amnesty's work while operating Capital
Coverage in Washington, D.C. in 1988-96. The news service and
its Alternative Media (publicity) Project are now based in Clifton.
E-mail CapCoverag@aol.com
