(Mexico City) Killings of gays and lesbians have risen in Mexico despite a government tolerance campaign and a law legalizing same-sex marriage in the capital, according to a report released Thursday by a coalition of civic groups.

A review of more than 70 newspapers in 11 Mexican states found an average of nearly 30 killings a year motivated by homophobia between 1995 and 2000, compared to nearly 60 a year between 2001 and 2009, the report said.

Ricardo Bucio, president of the government’s National Council for the Prevention of Discrimination, backed the report, saying it gave visibility to a lingering problem.

The government launched a radio campaign in 2005 to promote tolerance of homosexuals.

In December, the Mexico City legislature approved the first law in Latin America explicitly giving gay marriages the same status as heterosexual ones. The legislation, affecting only the capital, also allows same-sex couples to adopt children.

Mexico City’s annual gay pride parade draws tens of thousands of people, and in some neighborhoods gays openly hold hands.

But violence against gays seems to have increased as more become public about their sexual orientation, said Alejandro Brito, director of Letter S, one of the groups that released the report.

Mexico City had the most homophobia-motivated killings, with 144 between 1995 and 2009, according to the report.

Despite the federal government’s push to promote tolerance, President Felipe Calderon’s conservative administration campaigned against the Mexico City law allowing same-sex marriage.

Maryland may recognize out-of-state gay marriages

Maryland Attorney General Doug Gansler today announced that Maryland could recognize gay marriages performed in other jurisdictions – like Washington, DC – where they were legal.

The announcement doesn’t make the recognition of gay marriages a reality, however. That would only come if the Maryland General Assembly enacted legislation; the Court of appeals …

Update: NY court upholds gay marriage recognition

New York State’s highest court unanimously fought off a challenge to the NYS policy signed by Gov. David Paterson that recognizes gay marriages performed in other states.

However, the judges ruled narrowly, and asked that the legislature resolved the question of marriage equality.

From the New York Times:
…the decision gave gay advocates …

Census may not count gay marriages

Technical reasons might prevent the 2010 Census from counting same-sex married couples.

Judge Declines to Stay Law on Gay Marriage

A Superior Court judge decided yesterday not to delay enactment of a law stipulating that the D.C. government will recognize same-sex marriages performed in other jurisdictions.

Judge Judith E. Retchin ruled that she would not a grant a stay preventing the law from taking effect Monday, as requested by opponents. However, the effective date is likely to be delayed by the need for congressional approval. Attorneys for the group said they needed more time to research and argue their position before the law takes effect.

Opponents, led by Bishop Harry Jackson of Hope Christian Church in Beltsville, and seven other D.C. voters want a referendum on the issue, but the D.C. elections board said that would be illegal under the District’s Human Rights Act.

Although Retchin decided against delaying the law’s enactment, she said opponents could seek to amend the law after the marriage provision takes effect.

See Judge Declines to Stay Law on Gay Marriage

Washington Post

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Gay Marriage in Washington, DC: Coming Tuesday at 12:01 am

The D.C. Council has passed a gay marriage recognition bill. Mayor Adrian M. Fenty has signed it. The Board of Elections and Ethics has rejected a referendum effort aimed at overturning it. A Superior Court judge has upheld that decision.

So, barring intervention from the D.C. Court of Appeals—and, according to a court spokesperson, no appeal was filed by close of business today—gay marriages will very soon be legal in the District of Columbia.

Brian Flowers, the general counsel for the D.C. Council and the official counter of congressional review days, tells LL today that, by his count, the review period will end at 12:01 a.m. on Tuesday, July 7.

Now, if you’re expecting a big public spectacle at that hour—couples heading down to the courthouse at midnight, mass weddings at city hall, etc.—you may be disappointed: A recognition of an out-of-state marriage is something that does not require any official action on the District’s part; if you have a valid marriage license from Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, or California (issued during the 14-week period that it was legal there), you will automatically be considered married in the District.

However, newly legitimate couples are free, of course, to party however they wish.

See Gay Marriage in Washington, DC: Coming Tuesday at 12:01 am
Washington City Paper

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Voter ‘animus’ to be issue in Calif marriage case

When the U.S. Supreme Court overturned an amendment to the Colorado Constitution that outlawed discrimination protections for gay people, same-sex couples could not enter into civil unions or domestic partnerships anywhere in the nation, much less get married.

But as they seek to persuade a federal judge to strike down California’s ban on gay marriages, lawyers for two unmarried gay couples are using that 13-year-old decision as their road map — one they expect will eventually lead the high court to take up the marriage issue.

In the Colorado case, Romer v. Evans, the Supreme Court majority held that voters’ dislike of gays and the laws that several cities had approved to shield them from bias motivated the state amendment. Such “animus,” it said, was incompatible with the section of the U.S. Constitution that requires the government to treat its citizens equally absent a compelling reason to do otherwise.

The attorneys behind the challenge to California’s Proposition 8 plan to argue during a pretrial hearing Thursday that by stripping gays of the right to wed, the voter-approved ban runs afoul of America’s founding framework in the same way — and for the same reason.

“Romer is a strikingly similar situation to what we have here. You had a ballot initiative, a majority vote of the people, taking away a right,” said Theodore J. Boutrous Jr., a member of the legal team led by former U.S. Solicitor General Theodore Olson and veteran trial lawyer David Boies. “And there was no justification or rationale other than disapproval by that majority of that group.”

U.S. District Chief Judge Vaughn R. Walker on Tuesday issued a tentative order to fast-track the case in his San Francisco court.

Among the questions he said he wants covered at trial are whether sexual orientation is unchangeable, if permitting same-sex marriage “destabilizes” traditional unions and whether Proposition 8′s ballot history demonstrates the measure had “discriminatory intent.”

California Attorney General Jerry Brown, a defendant in the case, has sided with gay rights advocates and declined to defend the ban, which overturned a California Supreme Court ruling that had legalized same-sex marriages. The state Supreme Court five weeks ago upheld the measure, saying it represented a valid exercise of voters’ authority to amend the California Constitution.

Proposition 8′s sponsors, a coalition of religious conservative groups called Protect Marriage, has been given permission to intervene in the federal case. In court papers, the group’s lawyers rejected the assertions that anti-gay attitudes fueled the November measure and that the 1996 Colorado case was applicable.

“Nothing in California law, either Proposition 8 or otherwise, indicates that Californians harbor animus towards gay and lesbian individuals,” they wrote.

Since the U.S. Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision, attorneys for gay rights and Christian conservative groups have debated whether the Romer decision could be used to expand gay rights. The ruling marked the first time the Supreme Court determined that the Constitution’s equal rights guarantees extended to gays and lesbians.

“The basic point of Romer is that government cannot ever act out of hostility toward a group of people, and whether that is in the context of marriage or anti-discrimination law, the point carries over,” said Suzanne Goldberg, who worked on the case and now directs Columbia Law School’s Sexuality and Gender Law Program.

The ruling has been cited, though so far unsuccessfully, in past challenges to gay marriage bans in Nebraska and Florida. At the same time, gay rights groups mostly have shied away from pursuing federal marriage cases in favor of pursuing marriage rights in state courts.

Legal observers on both sides of the debate agree, however, that California’s Proposition 8 presents novel questions

that could make the issue ripe for federal action.

See Voter ‘animus’ to be issue in Calif marriage case
San Francisco Chronicle

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Mich. lawmaker seeks to recognize gay marriage

A Michigan lawmaker said she wants to change state law to recognize gay marriages.

The proposal announced by State Rep. Pam Byrnes faces an uphill climb. Michigan voters in 2004 passed a constitutional amendment defining marriage as a union between one man and one woman, effectively banning the legal recognition of …

Pulitzer-winner Kushner revels over Bachmann’s possible response to ‘Homosexual’ ads

Periodically each evening, the “smokestack”/LED sign atop the Guthrie Theater on Minneapolis’ riverfront lights up to spell out, in gigantic letters, “HOMOSEXUAL.” The word, along with others in the title of playwright Tony Kushner’s newest work have given the gay Pulitzer Prize winner pleasure recently. In the intro to an interview with CNN today, he speaks about how he felt first seeing bus advertisements for the Guthrie’s production of the play, “The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures,” on streets in Rep. Michele Bachmann’s home state:

“I was excited to see a bus go by a couple of months ago when I first got to Minneapolis and the only words you could make out as the bus went by were ‘homosexual’ and ’socialism,’” Kushner says, adding that the first thing he did when he saw it was call his husband back home in New York City.

“He said, ‘Yeah, it’s great — You’ve come up with a perfectly shaped 14-word phrase of English that’s guaranteed to give [Republican U.S. Rep.] Michele Bachmann a heart attack, and it doesn’t even have an active verb in it.’”

Bachmann — a conservative who made national headlines during last year’s election when she called for an investigation into “anti-American” members of Congress (including then-presidential candidate Barack Obama) — is a vocal critic of gay rights and supports a federal ban on gay marriages.

“So it’s like … I feel good about that,” Kushner adds with a chuckle.

“The Intelligent Homosexual,” as t-shirts available at the Guthrie shorten it to, was commissioned by the Guthrie and gets its lengthy title from two 19th-century books: George Bernard Shaw’s The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism and Mary Baker Eddy’s Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. It closes June 28

See Pulitzer-winner Kushner revels over Bachmann’s possible response … Minnesota Independent

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