Cardinal: Catholic schools welcome kids of gays – but priest made OK call
(Boston) Boston Cardinal Sean O’Malley on Wednesday defended a priest who denied admission to a parish school to a gay couple’s child, calling it a pastoral decision and saying the priest had his “full confidence and support.”
O’Malley’s comments on his blog were his first public remarks about the decision earlier this month by St. Paul Elementary School in Hingham to rescind the boy’s acceptance because his parents are lesbians.
A parent of the boy said the Rev. James Rafferty, the parish priest at St. Paul’s, said her relationship was “in discord” with church teachings, which sees marriage as only between a man and a woman. She said the principal told her teachers wouldn’t be prepared to handle the boy’s questions when he realized the church’s view of family conflicted with what he saw at home. The parent spoke to The Associated Press but asked not to be named to protect the welfare of the child.
The decision prompted calls for O’Malley to intervene. The Catholic Schools Foundation, which O’Malley chairs, said the decision was at odds with Gospel teaching, and it wouldn’t fund schools that made similar decisions.
The archdiocese’s head of education later called the parent, apologized and offered to help the 8-year-old enroll in another Catholic school.
O’Malley said Rafferty had come under “undue criticism” for the decision.
“He made a decision about the admission of the child to St. Paul School based on his pastoral concern for the child,” O’Malley wrote. “I can attest personally that Father Rafferty would never exclude a child to sanction the child’s parents.”
The archdiocese said it is creating a policy to clarify its schools don’t bar children with same-sex parents.
“It is true that we welcome people from all walks of life,” O’Malley wrote. “But we recognize that, regardless of the circumstances involved, we maintain our responsibility to teach the truths of our faith, including those concerning sexual morality and marriage.”
O’Malley began his post with a recollection about meeting the young daughter of a murdered woman who had run a brothel while he was bishop in the West Indies. He said the woman’s daughter had left public school because she was being badly taunted, and he immediately directed that the girl be admitted to the local Catholic school.
“Catholic schools exist for the good of the children and our admission standards must reflect that,” he wrote. “We have never had categories of people who were excluded.”
The Hingham case was similar to a situation in Boulder, Colo., in which a Catholic school said two children of lesbian parents could not re-enroll because of their parents’ sexual orientation, and the Denver Archdiocese backed the decision.
“It is clear that all of their school policies (in Denver) are intended to foster the welfare of the children and fidelity to the mission of the Church,” O’Malley wrote. “Their positions and rationale must be seriously considered.”
Married lesbian couple seeks protection in India
LUCKNOW: Even as the country debates pros and cons of legalising the same sex marriages and the Central government finds itself in a fix over the issue, a lesbian couple tied nuptial knot defying all social norms in Muzaffarnagar, known for honour killings and fundamentalist diktats by caste-based panchayats.
This is not all. Two days after the incident hit the headlines, the Muzaffarnagar district administration received another application for same sex marriage from another lesbian couple. While in the first case, officers have provided security to the newly wedded, they have not given permission to the second couple fearing a backlash from the community. Significantly, in both the cases, the couples belong to low income group and are not highly educated.
In the first case, Komal Sharma and Pinki Kashyap entered into wedlock and left their families to live together. The couple hails from Dayanand Nagar, a small locality in Shamli tehsil of Muzaffarnagar district. While Komal belongs to a Brahmin family and is educated till class XI, Pinki hails from an other backward class family and has studied only till class VIII. Komal’s father Rajendra Sharma is with home guard and Pinki’s father Hariram runs a small dairy.
The two girls met three months back in a vocational training centre where both had enrolled for a course in stitching. The friendship soon turned into love and they got secretly married through Arya Samaj rituals at a temple in Muzaffarnagar. They also to have entered wedlock legally through a court marriage in Delhi. While Pinki posed as the groom, Komal dressed as a bride.
The couple kept their marriage a secret till July 23, the day they left their families. According to police, Pinki came to Komal’s house in the morning of July 23 when Komal was alone with her two younger siblings. The duo gave sleeping pills mixed in cold drink to the Komal’s younger brother and sister and left the house. The two girls also filed an application in the office of Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP), Muzaffarnagar, complaining that they have threat to their lives from their families. See Married woman marries her ‘girlfriend’ in west UP Times of India
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History Is on My Side, Says Calif. Justice Who Voted Against Gay-Marriage Ban
Carlos Moreno stood alone in May when he dissented from the decision upholding Proposition 8. But the California Supreme Court justice says history will prove him right — that denying gays and lesbians the right to marry is illegal discrimination.
“Someday at some point my dissent will be the majority view in California,” he said during an interview in his San Francisco chambers late Wednesday. “I think that’s where the law is headed.”
“Equal protection is either equal or it’s not,” he added. “It’s not the kind of thing you can chip away at.”
Moreno, one of four justices to back same-sex marriage last year and the sole vote against Prop 8 this year, took time to talk to The Recorder about his votes, his brief moment on the Obama administration’s short list for the nation’s highest court, and U.S. Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor’s controversial “wise Latina” comment.
Moreno’s dissent in Strauss v. Horton, 46 Cal.4th 364, came at a touchy time for him. He had been contacted by the Obama administration a week earlier as a possible replacement for retiring U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Souter. Since President Obama has officially stated his opposition to same-sex marriage, it could be assumed Moreno’s position on marriage and Prop 8 might be troublesome.
But, Moreno said, Obama’s vetters didn’t ask him how his Prop 8 vote — which wasn’t yet public — would go.
“They just asked if there were any high-profile cases — past or present, including on the trial court — that would be the kind of case that would draw attention.”
See History Is on My Side, Says Calif. Justice Who Voted Against Gay …
Law.com
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Report Warns Murder Rate Against Transgendered People Is Rising
A new report has found an estimated 200 transgendered persons were murdered from January 2008 to June 2009; which is enough to say that every three days a transgendered person is killed somewhere in the world.
The project was started by the international group Transgender Europe (TGEU) and the journal ‘Liminalis’ in an effort to track and combat violence committed against the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and questioning (LGBT) community.
The project compiled at least 121 murder cases from 2008 and another 83 murder cases for the year-to-date. Preliminary results show that the murder rate for transgendered people is a global problem, effecting North America, Latin America, Europe, Africa, Asia, and Oceania.
“Furthermore that the number of reports of murdered trans people is increasing in the last years,” the report warns. “The majority of cases have been reported from Latin America and North America.”
The report shows Brazil is by far the most dangerous place in the world for the transgendered community. In 2008, 59 people were murdered while another 23 murders were reported so far this year. Last year, 16 transgendered people were murdered in the United States, the second most dangerous place on Earth.
While the report is an effort to document all crimes, even its authors admit to the limitations of compiling a survey while countries continue to avoid reporting hate crimes.
See Report Warns Murder Rate Against Transgendered People Is Rising
AHN
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Gay activists and union leaders commit to year two of Hyatt Boycott
See Gay activists and union leaders commit to year two of Hyatt Boycott
Gay and Lesbian Times
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Nominee confirmed for Civil Rights job
The New Jersey Commission on Civil Rights yesterday approved the nomination of a new state civil rights chief who is not admitted to practice law in New Jersey despite two lawmakers’ questions about his residency and commitment to gay and lesbian issues.
Chinh Le, Attorney General Anne Milgram’s nominee, was approved as head of the state Division on Civil Rights by a 6-0 vote of the commission at its monthly meeting in Newark. One commissioner abstained after her proposal for a private executive session between commissioners and the nominee was rejected.
See Nominee confirmed for Civil Rights job
The Star-Ledger
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Officers say teen slaying suspect admitting killing, apologized Los Angeles Times -
A few minutes after he allegedly gunned down his gay classmate, Oxnard junior high school student Brandon McInerney calmly allowed police to take him into custody, telling them, “I’m the one who did it,” the officers testified in a Ventura courthouse Monday.
McInerney, who was 14 at the time, apologized repeatedly for allegedly gunning down Larry King, 15, a classmate who students said had pursued McInerney romantically, the officers testified. See Officers say teen slaying suspect admitting killing, apologized
Los Angeles Times -
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On Gay Issues, Obama Asks to Be Judged on Vows Kept
WASHINGTON — President Obama defended his policies on gay rights on Monday, telling an audience of gay men and lesbians that he remained committed to overturning the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” rule and that he expected to be judged “not by promises I’ve made but by the promises that my administration keeps.”
Mr. Obama made his remarks at a reception in the East Room of the White House to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion, the 1969 uprising that gave rise to the modern gay rights movement. Joined by his wife, Michelle, the president directly addressed criticism from gay and lesbian leaders that he had not been a forceful advocate for them.
“I know that many in this room don’t believe progress has come fast enough, and I understand that,” Mr. Obama said. “It’s not for me to tell you to be patient any more than it was for others to counsel patience to African-Americans who were petitioning for equal rights a half-century ago.
“We’ve been in office six months now. I suspect that by the time this administration is over, I think you guys will have pretty good feelings about the Obama administration.”
Many lesbians and gay men supported Mr. Obama’s election, but their leaders have grown increasingly impatient and critical of him as president.
See On Gay Issues, Obama Asks to Be Judged on Vows Kept
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Effort To Ban Gay Unions Falling Short In Wash. State
The effort to place a gay-inclusive domestic partnership law up for a vote in Washington State appears to be falling short.
With a looming deadline of Saturday at 2PM, opponents of the law dubbed by the media as the “everything but marriage law” have only 4 full days left to gather thousands of valid signatures.
Opponents – a coalition of mostly religious groups – announced their attempt to repeal the bill in November, even before it became law in May. Gary Randall, president of the Faith and Freedom Network, says his group filed Referendum 71 because the law is too close to marriage and violates the law.
“The bill … elevates homosexual relationships to that of traditional marriage, thus eliminating any legal difference between domestic partnerships and marriage,” Randall wrote in a blog entry posted on the group’s website before the bill became law.
“I do not believe a majority [of] Washingtonians believe in homosexual marriage, nor do they want to become a national attraction for homosexuals from other states and countries,” he added.
Organizers, however, admit that they have fallen desperately behind in collecting the 120,577 valid signatures needed to qualify the measure. Randall told the conservative group Concerned Women for America that only 75,000 signatures had been collected as of Friday. Leaving the group at least 45,577 signatures short. But in order to ensure there are sufficient valid signatures, the group estimates it needs to collect 75,000 signatures. In other words, opponents need to collect as many signatures in one week as they did in the previous seven to eight weeks.
The Democratic-controlled House passed the bill in April along a mostly party-line vote of 62 to 35. Senators approved the bill in March with a 30 to 18 vote, and Governor Chris Gregoire signed the bill into law on May 18. See Effort To Ban Gay Unions Falling Short In Wash. State
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What will parents do to avoid having a gay son?
In the early 1990s, when genetic research was far less advanced than today, Jonathan Tolins posed the question: If a woman knew in advance that her male baby would be born gay, would she still go through with the pregnancy?
That’s the premise of his 1992 drama “The Twilight of the Golds,” which was filmed for cable television in 1997 and which receives an emotionally gripping staging courtesy of Theatre Out.
Through her husband’s medical research firm, which has devised genetic testing of fetuses, the pregnant Suzanne Gold-Stein (Jennifer Pearce) has discovered that her baby boy has the genetic markers of homosexuality.
The question of whether to keep the baby is, in fact, illuminated by the family’s firsthand experience: Suzanne’s brother David (Tim Woods) is gay, a factor that has, despite their denials, always affected his bond with her and with their parents.
The play is told from the opera-loving David’s point of view, its title a pun drawn from “The Twilight of the Gods,” the fourth opera in Wagner’s “Ring” Cycle. He frames the play’s focal issue when he asks, “What difference does being gay make?” As the story progresses, its ethical complications are magnified, even as Tolins takes time out to assail the materialism of the 1980s.
Complicating the ethical dilemma posed by Tolins is the way it splits the family. For David, who is, ironically, pro-choice, aborting the baby is tantamount to killing him. As much as she dotes on David, mom Phyllis (Karen Harris) has to admit that “it hurts to see your child become something different.”
Seeing genetic testing as a boon to mankind, Suzanne’s husband Rob (Eric James) insists that he and Suzanne “don’t need David to tell us how to live our lives,” while patriarch Walter Gold (Rick Kopps) maintains that “it’s Rob and Suzanne’s decision.”
See What will parents do to avoid having a gay son?
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