Margarita Lopez, the first openly lesbian Puerto Rican to run for public office in the U.S., has won the Democratic nomination for New York City’s Council’s District 2 seat. Initial reports said Lopez had lost, but officials discovered they had not counted absentee, emergency, and affadavit ballots, which increased her votes.
The Centers for Disease Control report that AIDS cases among women in the U.S. are increasing faster than among men, and that heterosexual sex is now the leading cause of infection among women. Between 1991 and 1995, the number of AIDS-infected women increased 63%, while it increased 12.8% for men. Women currently represent 19% of […]
A report published yesterday in the Medical Journal of Australia found that women were overwhelmingly satisfied with medical abortions using mifepristone (RU-486) and prostaglandin. Thirty-eight women who had abortions with RU-486 and prostaglandin were surveyed, and they rated their satistaction with the process as an average of 4.5 out of 5. Of the 15 who […]
After a tumultous 25 years which included a 9-month suspension of publication, fights with advertisers, and ground-breaking work on unpopular topics like domestic violence, Ms. magazine is celebrating its birthday this month. Ms. is a thick, ad-free magazine that is published 6 times a year and enjoys a circulation of 200,000. Ms. is still often […]
Safeway, the nation’s second-largest retail food chain, has signed an agreement with United Farm Workers supporting human rights for 20,000 California berry pickers. They join the 27 retail food companies covering 4,630 stores in 41 states and parts of Canada that currently support strawberry workers. By signing the UFW agreement, Safeway is endorsing the rights […]
Investigators looking into the gang rape that occurred in an abandoned classroom last spring criticized school administrators yesterday for not acting on another teacher’s advice and possibly preventing it, as well as not reporting the rape to police until a month after the girl reported it to school authorities. Although an art teacher at August […]
After two decades of steady growth, weekly earnings for women who work full-time have dropped to just under 75% of men’s earnings, down from 77% four years ago. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that between 1979 and 1993, women’s earnings as a percentage of men’s rose from 62% to 77%. Economists disagree on the […]
Republican candidate for Governor James Gilmore said yesterday that he supports strict parental consent laws for abortion. Gilmore, who opposes all abortions performed after the 12th week, even in cases of rape or incest, surprised both anti-choicers and liberals with his announcement. His Democratic opponent, Lt. Gov. Donald Beyer, held a rally yesterday with National […]
At a National Gay and Lesbian Taskforce ceremony last night, Vice President Al Gore said that he was committed to passing an employment nondiscrimination act, increasing funding for AIDS research, and focusing more attention on hate crimes against gays and lesbians. The crowd of about 200 was enthusiastic as Gore assured them, that as “full […]
Citing serious health risks, drug companies pulled two of the most popular diet drugs off the market yesterday. The Food and Drug Administration found that Dexfenfluramine, sold as “Redux,” and fenfluramine, one half of the “phen-fen” combination and sold alone as Pondimin, had caused heart lesions that could indicate weak heart valves in 30% of […]
As the date of the Promise Keeper’s rally at the Mall in Washington, D.C. approaches, many clerics are speaking out against the organization, saying they are concerned that the Promise Keepers advocate women’s oppression and are too closely affiliated with the political Religious Right. Local clergy say they’re discouraging their congregations from attending, as well […]
Because Army men are “irritated” about the different physical fitness standards for men and women, the Army will toughen the women’s fitness tests. An Army investigation panel surveyed 30,000 troops over eight months and found only half the men believed women pull their weight. One of the panel’s leaders, Gen. Evelyn Foote, said that the […]
“Ellen”, the show that inspired controversy when the main character “came out” as a lesbian, has won an Emmy for the writing of the coming-out episode. When accepting the award for comedy writing, Ellen DeGeneres, the lesbian actress who plays the show’s lead, Ellen Morgan, dedicated the award to gay and lesbian teenagers, telling them […]
By Oct. 1, the states are expected to have 75% of the two-parent welfare families and 25% of welfare recipients overall on work programs. Federal funding will be cut as punishment, yet only a few states are expected to meet the requirements. For example, California only has about 20% of their two-parent families working, which […]
The new Miss America, Kate Shindle, will spend her efforts on AIDS education and making condoms available to high schoolers. Shindle, a 20-year-old student at Northwestern University, said the public needed to realize they cannot “talk kids out of having sex,” but that they could “meet them where they are and talk to them about […]
In a report highly critical of Army officers, an internal investigative panel of senior officials declared in a report released yesterday that “passive leadership has allowed sexual harassment to persist” and that the Army “lacks the institutional commitment” to treat women equally. Rep. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said […]
Canadian and U.S. police broke up an international prostitution ring which had bought impoverished southeast Asian women and forced them into the sex circuit. Following several raids in Toronto and San Jose, Calif., the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service announced Sept. 11 that they had arrested dozens of Thai […]
Tracey St. Pierre, the chief of staff for Rep. Charles Canady (R-Fla.), announced that she is a lesbian and has quit to work as a lobbyist for the Human Rights Campaign (HRC). St. Pierre told this week’s The Hill that she will lobby Congress for gay rights through HRC, the nation’s largest homosexual organization. Her […]
A new study reports men rape a Romanian woman every six hours, according to the Romanian newspaper Adevarul. Researchers Sorin Radulescu and Dan Banciu of the Sociological Institute of the Romanian Academy said that the number of rapes doubled between 1990 and 1995. They concluded that “Romania seems at present to be a sick society” […]
A study commissioned by the German government has found that one in seven women in Germany is raped or sexually harassed at least once in her lifetime, yet only five percent report it to the police. The regional officials who published the study estimated that between 150,000 and 300,000 women are victimized each year, with […]
