There is an old joke around these parts. Question: Other than Jerusalem, what do ultra-religious Jews, Muslims and Christians love? Answer: They love to hate homosexuals.

But travel the 60km (40 miles) from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv, and you enter a world apart. Major streets are decked with the multi-coloured Gay Pride banner.

In this centenary year of the city, this is now Gay Pride month. On Friday, in Meir Dizengoff park, tens of thousands of people are expected to attend the annual Gay Pride parade which will end, this year, with a twist.

Four couples will take part in what is being called Israel’s first, public, gay wedding ceremony.

Tal Dekel and Itay Gourevitch, are sitting, wedged happily next to each other, on a park bench. Tal is a fashion designer, Itay a website editor. Both are 33. They have been together for eight years, since the night they met in a club.

Two weeks ago, they decided to get married. “It’s a chance to have our own rights: to have a quiet corner with our family, just like everyone else,” says Tal.

Itay says that things have improved for gay and lesbian Israelis. He can now, at least in Tel Aviv, walk down the street, arm in arm with his partner. “Fifteen years ago, I would have been beaten up.”

But there is still discrimination, he says. “As a gay couple, we can’t get a loan to buy a house together. We don’t have the right to adopt a child: we’d have to go abroad to do that. But we have all the obligations: we have to pay all the taxes.”

See Gay Israelis prepare for their big day BBC News

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New England economy could see gay-marriage boost

The expansion of legal gay marriage across New England could deliver an economic windfall by attracting a youthful “creative class” of workers to a region with an aging population.
In the past year, Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine have joined Massachusetts, which in 2004 became the first U.S. state to allow same-sex weddings, in blessing gay and lesbian weddings.
That makes the region the first in the United States where same-sex couples can move from one state to another while retaining marriage benefits.
New arrivals include John Visser and Nick Keffer, who recently moved to Hartford, Connecticut, from Raleigh, North Carolina. They plan to wed later this month.
“The sole, only reason why we moved was because it was now legal for us to get married here,” said Visser, 42. “No other reason whatsoever other than marriage equality. We were perfectly happy in North Carolina.”
New England has long burnished an image of tolerance. Early European settlers in the 17th-century escaped religious persecution, although they imposed their own stern doctrines and sometimes expelled dissenters. Later, the region led the right for the abolition of black slavery.
Five out of the region’s six states now endorse gay weddings after New Hampshire legalized same-sex marriage on Wednesday, leaving Rhode Island as the sole holdout.
The spread of gay marriage could serve as a recruiting tool for universities, health care companies and financial services firms that dominate the region’s economy, experts said.
“It will be a selling point when it comes to trying to lure people with same-sex partners who are being wooed for a job,” said M.V. Lee Badgett, a University of Massachusetts economist See New England economy could see gay-marriage boost
Reuters

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Rudy decides toskip gay wedding

Ex-NYC Mayor cancels attendance at wedding of men who housed him during divorce.

Rudy decides toskip gay wedding

Ex-NYC Mayor cancels attendance at wedding of men who housed him during divorce.

Rudy a no-show at gay pals’ wedding

(New York City) When then-mayor Rudy Giuliani was forced to leave home during a nasty divorce in 2001, he was taken in by Howard Koeppel and his longtime partner Mark Hsaio.

He stayed for months with the couple in their $2.37 million dollar Manhattan home and invited the men to his …

Methodist Court Rejects Gay Marriage, OKs Bush Library

The United Methodist Church’s highest court has ruled that clergy may not officiate at same-sex unions, even in states where such marriages are legal, and gave the final OK for the George W. Bush Library to be built at Southern Methodist University.

The church’s nine-member Judicial Council rejected separate resolutions passed by the California-Nevada and California-Pacific Conferences that voiced support for clergy who officiate at such unions.

Last year, the 8.3 million-member church upheld rules in its Book of Discipline, or constitution, that Methodist churches cannot be used to host same-sex unions and clergy are prohibited from officiating at them.

The latest court ruling rejected a California-Nevada resolution that supported retired clergy who volunteered to conduct gay weddings, and a California-Pacific resolution upholding the “pastoral need and prophetic authority” of clergy to do so.

Between May and November, 2008, California allowed same-sex couples to marry until voters banned the practiced with a constitutional amendment.

“An annual conference may not legally negate, ignore or violate provisions of the Discipline with which they disagree, even when the disagreements are based on conscientious objections to the provisions,” the court ruled, according to United Methodist News Service.

In a separate case, the court said it found no reason to halt construction of the planned George W. Bush Presidential Center at the church-owned school in Dallas.

Critics contend the library complex and affiliated policy center will promote policies that the United Methodist Church officially opposed, including the Iraq War. The former president and his wife, Laura, are both United Methodists.