Discrimination can kill
3/20/2004
I AM THE MOTHER of three and grandmother of four. I believe that discrimination kills. It kills the spirit, soul, and sometimes the body. My son Mark is dead. He grew up in a caring, conservative, Christian home. He attended parochial high school. When he was 19 I learned that he "hated" himself. He lived in fear of people discovering that he was gay. Obviously, he did not love himself and believed that his parents could not love a gay son. We eventually did find out his secret and told him we loved him and believed that God loved him just the way he was. His first letter to us after our discovery demonstrated his disbelief. He thought we might not want to continue to pay his college tuition. Apparently, he felt undeserving.


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8 Gay Couples Denied Wedding Licenses
By MIKE SCHNEIDER The Associated Press
Published: Mar 20, 2004
ORLANDO - Mike Palmateer and Clinton McCracken approached the deputy clerk's window Friday and submitted a marriage application. Michelle Gervy, a deputy clerk at the Orange County Courthouse, handed them a copy of a Florida statute and gently told them, ``Unfortunately, we're unable to process or accept the application because of Florida statute.''


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Club owner backs away from same-sex marriages after visit from liquor authorities
The Associated Press
NEW PALTZ, N.Y. -- Organizers who planned a fourth round of same-sex marriages here Saturday switched locations after the owner of the club where the ceremonies were to take place got a warning from state liquor authorities, the club owner said Friday. Steve Scheno, 24, owner of The Wave, had given approval for the ceremonies at his club. But Scheno backed out after he was told by an agent from the New York State Liquor Authority that if illegal activity were conducted at the club it would "reflect on" the club's liquor license, he said.



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Hiding Behind the Constitution
By WILLIAM B. RUBENSTEIN
LOS ANGELES
Neither Democrats nor Republicans have distinguished themselves in the debate over gay marriage. Politicians of both parties — led by President Bush, with his proposed amendment banning gay marriage — have avoided the main issue and sought refuge in the abstractions of the Constitution.
Instead of asking what kind of society we want, they argue about what our structure of government can permit.


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and if you do not thing the government has its hands you your pocket.. it enforces strict gender codes, by force...

Transsexual Arrested For Trying To Marry
by 365Gay.com Newscenter Staff
Posted: March 20 2004 12:02 a.m. ET
(Leavenworth County, Kansas) -  A transsexual woman has been arrested for applying for a marriage license.  48 year old Sandy Clarissa Gast (pictured) is charged with providing false information on an official document. Gast has legally changed her name and obtained a driver's license that declares her to be a female, but under Kansas law she is still a male.


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Gay minister's lawyer urges inclusiveness
By GENE JOHNSON
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
BOTHELL, Wash. -- A lawyer for a Methodist minister being tried by her church for being a lesbian urged jurors Friday to be faithful to church teachings on inclusiveness rather than to rules that say open homosexuals can't be ordained.



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Bush administration involvement in Scouts case disallowed
A federal judge has denied the Bush administration's request to get involved in a case about whether the Boy Scouts of America should lose its lease of a public park in San Diego because of the organization's policy of barring gay men from membership and leadership positions. Earlier this month, the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division submitted a brief supporting the Scouts in a four-year-long court fight over a lease on Fiesta Island, a public park where the BSA runs a youth aquatic center. The American Civil Liberties Union contends the Scouts should be evicted. "The government should be fighting discrimination and not aiding it," ACLU attorney M. Andrew Woodmansee said.


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Missouri university rejects nondiscrimination policy
Gays and lesbians at Southwest Missouri State were blocked again on Friday in their fight to get protection for sexual orientation added to the school's nondiscrimination policy. The university's board of governors refused to vote on a motion that would have ended a 12-year fight to protect gays and lesbians. The board's decision came a day after the university's president called homosexuality "a biological perversion" and said that adding sexual orientation to the university's nondiscrimination policy would wrongly protect a specific group of people. President John Keiser's position on homosexuality and stand against revising the nondiscrimination policy at Missouri's second-largest public university was delivered during a debate with two leaders of Lambda Alliance, which represents gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered faculty and staff on the Springfield campus.


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A new perspective on marriage
By Lisa Eisenbud

The battle for equal marriage rights for gay families can be an emotional roller coaster, but this lesbian mom has found that there are grueling challenges in day-to-day life that help keep her anchored.


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Talking points on marriage, part 1
By Ryan James Kim
In the first of Advocate.com’s series of “talking points” to counter arguments against same-sex marriage, we take on “civil unions are just as good” and “are you saying that mothers are irrelevant?” 


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Passing fancy
How important is it to "pass"?