Labor backs states on gay adoptions


Labor will back the federal government's ban on gay marriage, but it will fight to keep adoption policy in the domain of the states and territories.

The Opposition's support of the policy, which was introduced in parliament and is expected to be passed next month, has angered the Greens and the Democrats.

While supporting the move to ban same-sex marriage, Labor's justice spokeswoman Nicola Roxon said state and territory governments should keep control over adoption policy to ensure some cases don't fall through the cracks.



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Gay marriage plan scorned
State attorney general says Ferndale mayor cannot issue licenses for weddings
By Joel Kurth / The Detroit News

Some of the players have changed, but the fuss brewing over Ferndale Mayor Bob Porter asking gay couples to say “I do” is tinged with deja vu.

Oakland County Commissioner Tom McMillin, R-Auburn Hills, has asked state Attorney General Mike Cox to take action against Porter if he follows through with plans to officiate at a mass commitment ceremony for gay couples Saturday.

The request follows one in 2000, when the last mayor of Ferndale, Chuck Goedert, presided over a gay civil union, and conservatives led by the American Family Association of Michigan wanted the state to press charges.

And, like last time, the answer is the same.

“As long as the mayor of Ferndale doesn’t represent himself as having the ability to sanction a marriage or issue marriage licenses, there’s no legal force or effect,” said Stu Sandler, a spokesman for Cox.


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Gay Republicans' ads oppose amendment
By Times staff and news Services


BELLEVUE — A group of gay Republican activists is airing TV ads locally opposing a proposed amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would ban same-sex unions.

The state chapter of the Log Cabin Republicans spent $10,000 to run the 30-second ads on cable news channels in East King County over the weekend.

President Bush and GOP leaders began pushing to amend the Constitution earlier this year when gay and lesbian couples in a few states were allowed to marry.

Local members of the Log Cabin Republicans set up a display table this weekend at the state Republican Convention, where they handed out fliers explaining the group's mission and showed samples of the new TV spot.

"As GOP leaders from across Washington state come together, this ad sends an important message — you can be a good and loyal Republican by opposing efforts to write discrimination into the Constitution," said Brian Ballard, a national board member from Seattle.


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Labor to debate same-sex unions
By Orietta Guerrera
Canberra

Pressure is mounting on federal Labor before today's shadow cabinet meeting to reject the Federal Government's proposal to ban same-sex couples from marrying and adopting children from overseas.

The Opposition has indicated it will support the Government's moves, announced last week, to amend the Marriage Act to outlaw gay marriages, but will consider its position on adoption.

Opposition shadow attorney-general Nicola Roxon said that while Labor would not allow gay people to adopt children from overseas, she believed states should be responsible for adoption. She said the states had strict rules and most opted to not permit gay adoption.

"I think it is a bit inappropriate for the Prime Minister to now be trying to interfere in those decisions at the state and territory level, because at the end of the day it has to be the child's best interests that are considered," Ms Roxon said.



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Gay marriage opponents regroup
Activists fight law on several fronts
By Keith O'Brien
Staff writer

In the words of one opponent of gay marriage, the recent weddings in Massachusetts -- there have been more than a thousand in the week since their legalization -- mark the beginning of a "cultural battle" and the future of American families hangs in the balance.

Kris Mineau, the president of the Massachusetts Family Institute, a public policy organization dedicated to strengthening families, acknowledges that opponents may have lost the first round in this battle. But they have only begun to fight.
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In the months ahead, they will be attacking the issue on many fronts, lobbying to remove the judges on Massachusetts' Supreme Judicial Court who joined in legalizing the marriages, campaigning for elected officials who share their view, and hoping that an appeal, set to be heard in June, could overturn what's know as the Goodridge decision.

"I like to think of this as a very long steeplechase race. The horse is out of the gate, thanks to a judicial fiat," Mineau said last week. "The marriages have been invoked. But by no means is this race over. It has just begun."


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Blumenthal plays close to the vest on same-sex marriage
By Paul Hughes, Record-Journal staff

HARTFORD — Attorney General Richard Blumenthal makes a living giving opinions, and he hardly shies away from controversy.

The attorney general, however, will not publicly state his personal views on the politically, socially and legally contentious question of same-sex marriage at this time.

"I have been very scrupulously careful to avoid stating my personal view or opinions," Blumenthal told the Record-Journal.

He said he is not saying anything because he does not want to appear biased on the issue of same sex-marriage.

The attorney general released an important legal opinion on the question two weeks ago, and he said he might be asked to render others in the future.


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Universalist Unitarian church welcomes gays, lesbians


While homosexuality and gay marriage spark controversy nationwide these days, at least one church in Jackson County has a long history of acceptance of gays and lesbians.

"Our denomination has been ordaining gay and lesbians for more than 30 years, as well as performing same-sex ceremonies," said Jill Terwilliger, interim pastor of the Universalist Unitarian Church of East Liberty, 2231 Jefferson Road.

The 90-member congregation just went through an official "Welcoming Congregation Process" for gays and lesbians, a six- to nine-month study and reflection.
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Going through the process, Terwilliger explained, means this church is certified by the national body. All bylaws must have inclusive language and teachers are being trained in a sexuality curriculum called "Our Whole Lives."


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Big-city gay issue hits Bend
The City Council considers an antidiscrimination law as people move in from more liberal areas
MATTHEW PREUSCH


BEND -- When Mike Lovely moved here in 1978 to tally board feet for the U.S. Forest Service, there was beautiful skiing, fine fishing and no gay bar. All that is still true today, but just about everything else has changed.

Lovely, now 66, retired and in a long-term relationship with a Prineville man, remembers when Central Oregon's gay and lesbian community was small and fractured -- "low key," he said.

He recalls hearing from a local that all the gays and lesbians in Bend must have emigrated, like him, from California.

"I said, 'Well, buckaroo, there are homegrown ones in Oregon, believe it or not,' " he said.



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Summer Of Love
Move over, San Francisco. France is about to celebrate its first gay wedding. Is Europe ready for equal rites?
By JAMES GRAFF | PARIS


Dominique Adamski and Francis Dekens have been dreaming of a June wedding for a long, long time. Adamski, 50, a psychotherapist, and Dekens, 58, a retired bank employee, have been together for 25 years. They were the first gay couple in France to officially register their partnership, in 1999, under the then controversial law setting up "civil solidarity pacts" (PaCS). Pushed through against strong conservative opposition by France's Socialist-led government, the PaCS law gave the couple some legal recognition, but not exactly the same rules on taxation and pensions that apply to married couples in France. Now they want to take the next step. "We want to be formally recognized as a couple," says Adamski. "Marriage, period. That's the contract that best protects our interests and best symbolizes our love."

And so on June 19, Williams Meric, the mayor of Marseillan, the little town on the Mediterranean coast where Adamski and Dekens live, will join the two in marriage. It will be a joyous day; it is also against French law. The Adamski-Dekens match is part of an argument over same-sex marriage that has spread through the developed world in recent months. Last week in Massachusetts, where gay marriage has been legal since May 17, the Cape Cod resort of Provincetown yielded to a request from the Governor to stop marrying out-of-staters. In Australia, Prime Minister John Howard asked Parliament to define marriage as the union of a man and a woman. The discussion in France reaches a milestone this Saturday when Green Party leader Noël Mamère, in his capacity as mayor of the Bordeaux suburb of Bègles, will kick off the June season with France's first gay wedding by marrying Bertrand Charpentier, 31, a nurse's aide, and Stéphane Chapin, 33, a warehouse worker.


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Group to physically block gays from Communion
BY STEPHEN SCOTT
ST. PAUL PIONEER PRESS


ST. PAUL - Today at the Cathedral of St. Paul, a 1960s liberal anti-war activist turned orthodox church layman plans to stand -- literally -- in the way of gay Catholics and their supporters to prevent them from taking Holy Communion.

"I've never seen such an event unfold in a Catholic Mass, and I'm 50 years old," said Brian McNeill of Minneapolis, who helps organize the annual gay-rights presence at the Cathedral on Pentecost Sunday.

David Pence's plan has startled leaders of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.


It also shocked members of the Rainbow Sash Alliance in the Twin Cities, who have joined others in a worldwide movement the past several years by wearing sashes to Mass on Pentecost Sunday. They say they wear the sashes as a plea for "a conversion of heart" toward the inclusion of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Catholics.


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No issue of sexual deception
Gwen Araujo was just who she was
Dylan Vade
Don't talk to me about deception.

Gwen Araujo, a beautiful young transgender woman, was brutally beaten to death the fall of 2002. In the trial of three men accused of murder in her slaying, defense attorneys Tony Serra and Michael Thorman are using the "transgender/gay panic" defense. Their argument essentially is that Gwen deserved to be killed because she deceived, and thus stole the heterosexuality of the men she had sex with.

No one deserves to be killed for deception.

But in Gwen's case, there was no deception. Gwen was just being herself. In a world in which we are all told we have to be more feminine or more masculine -- Gwen was wise enough to know herself and brave enough to be herself. That is beautiful. She should be our role model.

Instead, transgender people are seen as deceivers. The word "deception" comes up often in our lives


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Local lawmakers want prohibition against gay marriages
By Mark Wineka, Salisbury Post

Local legislators are expressing strong support for a constitutional amendment that would define marriage in North Carolina as a union between a man and woman.

It would constitutionally prohibit gay marriages in the state.

Democrat Rep. Lorene Coates and Republican Rep. Fred Steen II, who together represent Rowan County in the N.C. House, have signed on as co-sponsors of House Bill 1606, the "Defense of Marriage" bill.

It would ask voters in November's general election to says yes or no to a constitutional amendment "to provide that marriage is the union of one man and one woman at one time, and this is the only marriage that shall be recognized as valid in this state."


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Rise of German Homosexual Emancipation Movement
By Leslie Feinberg

Winds of change will fill the banners of Lesbian Gay Bi Trans Pride this June, lifting them to new heights.

After decades of fierce and unrelenting struggle, same-sex love has been effectively decriminalized and many gains have been won. Organizing, rolling civil disobedience has helped push back state denial of equal rights of same-sex couples--a form of institutionalized discrimination that is a pillar of class society.

Millions of lesbians, gay men, bisexuals and trans people across the United States will take to the streets in Pride events in cities and towns this June, as they do each year to recall and honor the 1969 Stone wall uprising against police repression. And millions of people of all nationalities, sexualities, genders and sexes will line the streets to applaud and cheer these celebrations of individual courage and collective struggle.

The 1969 rebellion in New York's Green wich Village was led by the most oppressed of the LGBT communities--people of color, teenagers, transgender and transsexual, homeless, impoverished and so marginalized in the work force that prostitution was the only source of income for many.