Third-largest US church grapples with gay issue
Methodist clergy in Pacific Northwest acquit a lesbian minister, despite church's policy against homosexuality.
By Jane Lampman | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
The UMC, the third-largest Christian church in the United States after Roman Catholics and Southern Baptists, has been embroiled in debate on the issue for three decades. At its last general conference in 2000, however, two-thirds of the delegates voted against any change in policy, rejecting both ordination of gay clergy and blessing of same-sex unions. The trial outcome is likely to stir tumult leading up to the next conference, in late April, which most had expected would hew to the status quo.


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Gay Marriage
Sidestep on Freedom's Path
By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
CounterPunch
I'm for anything that terrifies Democrats, outrages Republicans, upsets the applecart. But exultation about the gay marriages cemented in San Francisco, counties in Oregon and New Mexico and some cities in New York is misplaced. Why rejoice when state and church extend their grip, which is what marriage is all about. Assimilation is not liberation, and the invocation of "equality" as the great attainment of these gay marriages should be challenged. Peter Tatchell, the British gay leader, put it well a couple of years ago: "Equality is a good start, but it is not sufficient. Equality for queers inevitably means equal rights on straight terms, since they are the ones who dominate and determine the existing legal framework. We conform -- albeit equally -- with their screwed up system. That is not liberation. It is capitulation.


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Rochester's Attorney Issues Opinion On Benefits For Gay Marriage Partners
Holly Maynard (Rochester, NY) 03/21/04 -- The legal counsel for the city of Rochester has issued an opinion on where the city should stand on recognizing gay marriages. The opinion, written by attorney Linda Kingsley, states that while the city cannot legally give out marriage licenses to same sex couples or perform ceremonies--it can recognize marriages that were performed in states where such unions are legal. 


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White Ribbon hopes to go national
By Christie Phillips cphillips@keynoter.com

The campaign, which kicked off Tuesday night at the City Commission meeting, is meant to bring to light the discrepancy between simultaneously extolling freedom and banning gay marriages.


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Gay Holocaust Denier Dumped By GOP
by 365Gay.com Newscenter Staff
(St. Paul, Minnesota)

  A Minnesota Republican was outraged gays, religious leaders and Holocaust survivors by claiming gays were never exterminated or sent to concentration camps by the Nazis has failed to get his own party's endorsement to run for another term in the state legislature.