Gay couples use engagement announcements to raise awareness
JENNY PRICE
Associated Press


MADISON, Wis. - Some gay couples in Wisconsin are sending out engagement announcements, but not because they plan to travel to Massachusetts where same-sex marriage is legal.

They're trying to build support for defeating a proposed amendment to the Wisconsin Constitution outlawing gay marriage and civil unions.

The new strategy comes as gay couples begin exchanging marriage vows in Massachusetts, the first time a state has granted gays and lesbians the right to legally wed.


"The overall goal is to personalize this," said Chris Ott, executive director of the statewide gay rights organization Action Wisconsin. "It's great what is happening in Massachusetts today, but we have just a very different situation in Wisconsin."



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Gay Marriage Coming to Iowa?
KCRG-TV9

Same sex couples gathered in the University of Iowa's Biology Building Monday night for a town meeting called "marriage does matter". Massachusetts issued its first same sex marriage Monday, which stirred up people from both sides of the issue.

U of I Professor Ellen Lewin has answered the call to support gay marriage for more than a decade. Lewin wrote a book on the topic and testified in the first gay marriage case last year in Canada. She and her partner, Liz, also tied the knot in Canada, but feel they left some loose ends. Lewin says because she doesn't get the tax breaks and other financial benefits as people in traditional marriages, she actually feels discriminated against by the U.S. government. "If you were to compare me to another faculty member with a legal spouse who makes the same salary…they make several hundred dollars more a month."

"These are issues that are near the heart of God,” says Iowa City Pastor Dan Bare. On the other end of the fight, pastor Bare says his congregation has prayed for the government to uphold God's law that marriage was meant to be between a man and a woman. "Anytime that you legalize something you put your stamp of approval on and you say 'this is okay, this is just fine.' Quite honestly this wouldn't be happening if churches had done their job in the past."


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Group Marriage: A Legal Right?
by Ira Chernus
 
Today is a rare good news day. A day to celebrate. 50 years ago, on May 17, the Supreme Court said that separate is inherently unequal. Today, that principle is being extended to all the gay and lesbian couples who are getting married in Massachusetts.

Not long ago, here in conservative Colorado, the state legislature refused to endorse a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage - even though the amendment is being sponsored by Colorado congresswoman, Marilyn Musgrave. Maybe some of our legislators found Musgrave's wording a bit over the top. After all, her amendment would ban marriage not only between couples of the same sex, but also between (that is, among) groups.

Groups? Who is advocating legalizing group marriage? It sounds like a scare tactic. Listen to right-wing alarmist Stanley Kurtz, of the conservative Hoover Institute, writing in the neo-con Weekly Standard: "Once we say that gay couples have a right to have their commitments recognized by the state, it becomes next to impossible to deny that same right to polygamists, polyamorists, or even cohabiting relatives and friends. And once everyone's relationship is recognized, marriage is gone."

Segregationists used the same kind of scare tactic 50 years ago, when the Supreme Court was considered the landmark school integration case, Brown vs. Board of Education. Allow the federal government to order white public schools to let blacks in? Why, the next thing you know, they will be ordering schools to educate the "mentally retarded." And everyone knows that's absurd. The Supreme Court treated that argument as irrelevant. The justices probably agreed it was absurd.


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Thousands rally against gay marriage at Capitol
By Howard Fischer, Capitol Media Services

More than 3,000 people rallied at the state Capitol and prayed at the Arizona Supreme Court on Monday in Phoenix to keep Arizona and the nation from recognizing same-sex marriages.

The gathering was designed to come on the same day Massachusetts began issuing marriage licenses to gay couples. Several speakers specifically made reference to that development and the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruling that paved the way for it.

"This redefinition (of marriage) was not sought for or voted for by the people of Massachusetts or the people of Arizona or the people of the United States of America,'' said Len Munsil, president of the Center for Arizona Policy. "This redefinition has been imposed upon us by four unelected lawyers in black robes in Massachusetts.''

It also comes a week before the justices of the Arizona Supreme Court decide whether they want to consider overturning a unanimous state appellate court ruling which said same-sex couples cannot marry here.




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Resolution Calls For Baptist Exodus From Public Schools
Resolution States Government Schools Are Anti-Christian
ALEXANDRIA, Va. --
A resolution has been drafted urging Southern Baptists to remove their children from the nation's public schools.

It declares that "the government school system that claims to be neutral with regard to Christ is actually anti-Christian."

The Southern Baptist Convention's Resolutions Committee will consider whether to present the measure for a vote next month at the denomination's annual meeting in Indianapolis.

The resolution cites growing acceptance of homosexuality in public schools and calls it "foolish for Christians to give their children to be trained in schools run by the enemies of God."


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Gays, lesbians rally to mark NJ's domestic partner law
By KATHY HENNESSY
Associated Press Writer

TRENTON, N.J. -- As same-sex couples celebrated gay marriage becoming legal Monday in Massachusetts, the state's Attorney General said lawyers are still deciding if New Jersey should recognize those unions.

Attorney General Peter Harvey said no decision has been made and that he did not except one to be reached soon.