STRASBOURG, France -- The 1982 Congress of the International Gay Association adjourned today with a call on European governments to improve the status of homosexuals as recommended last year by the Council of Europe Consultative Assembly.
The congress, adopting a set of nine recommendations, demanded that the Committee of Ministers of the 21-nation Council of Europe take early steps to liberalize laws on homosexuality.
The 150 delegates from 16 nations urged European teachers' unions to join IGA's campaign calling for the reinstatement of Belgian teacher Mrs Eliane Morissens, who was stripped of her teaching post because she is a lesbian.
The representatives of the 27 homosexual organizations attending the congress also demanded that the World Health Organization (WHO) strike homosexuality from its list of 'mental' disorders.
The congress already has come out in favor asking the U.N. to designate 1983 as the International Year for the Recognition of Homosexuality.
The participants had to sleep in tents supplied by the French army after local catholic church officials had denied them hospitality in a youth hostel.
Many speakers at the congress said the ban, issued by Msgr Leon-Arthur Elchinger, who pronounced homosexuals 'mentally sick persons,' in fact had helped to gain the convention wide publicity.
The Strasbourg meeting was in preparation for the Association's world congress scheduled for July in Washington.
