Austrian parliament OKs gay civil unions
(Vienna) Austria’s parliament passed legislation Thursday allowing homosexual couples to enter into civil unions, a move hailed by proponents as a historic win for gay rights in the country.
The bill, slated to become law Jan. 1., will give same-sex couples a series of rights enjoyed by their heterosexual counterparts, including …
Applause after NJ committee approves gay marriage bill
(Trenton, NJ) The New Jersey Senate Judiciary Committee handed proponents of marriage equality an important first-round victory last night, approving a bill that could make New Jersey the sixth state to allow same-sex marriage.
The panel’s 7- 6 approval came shortly after ten o’clock Monday night, after more than seven hours …
DC addresses domestic partnerships, religious protections in gay marriage bill
From a press release:
(Washington, D.C.) Proponents and supporters, including D.C. religious leaders, will attend the scheduled mark-up of the Religious Freedom and Civil Marriage Equality Amendment Act of 2009 at 2 p.m. Tuesday.
The Committee on Public Safety and the Judiciary, chaired by Councilmember Phil Mendelson, will review the text of …
Will John Travolta Renounce The Church Of Scientology?
There’s a rumor going around that one of Scientology’s most powerful proponents, John Travolta, is looking to leave the draconian religion once and for all. After the year he’s had, it would make sense.
According to the Daily Mail – who rounded up some interesting quotes on the matter – it appears to be a very real possibility. To say Travolta’s had a rough go of it recently would be putting it very, very lightly.
On the business side of things, Travolta’s big role this year performed under studio expectations. An complete aside, when you consider his personal life:
His son Jett – reportedly autistic, a diagnosis the Church of Scientology refuses to dignify – passed away earlier this year. Travolta defied Scientology and acknowledged it. Some sleazy gossip website put together a theory that enlists the idea of Travolta not only having a gay lover, but the gay lover – his son’s nanny – being a primary cause of his son’s death. Which is besides the fact that someone tried to extort him over documents involved in his son’s transportation, and his wife might’ve tried (successfully) to get Roger Friedman fired by going to the top brass at Fox over Friedman’s comments on Scientology.
See Will John Travolta Renounce The Church Of Scientology?
Gawker
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Gay partnership foes turn in referendum signatures
Opponents of a measure that passed the Legislature this year giving same-sex domestic partners all the rights of married people turned in signatures to the secretary of state’s office Saturday in attempt to overturn the new law through a citizen referendum.
Referendum 71 needs 120,577 valid voter signatures to qualify for the fall ballot. Exactly how many signatures the R-71 camp turned in Saturday wasn’t immediately clear. The secretary of state’s office said it received the first batch a little after 3 p.m. Saturday.
Election officials suggest submitting about 150,000 signatures to offset any invalid signatures. Dave Ammons, spokesman for the secretary of state’s office, said usually about 18 percent of signatures checked turn out to be invalid.
He said Saturday that R-71 backers were cutting it very close.
“They’re definitely running on fumes, in terms of trying to get their pad,” Ammons said.
The process of counting and verifying the signatures could go until the last week of August.
If R-71 proponents don’t have enough signatures, the domestic partnership expansion will immediately take effect. If the measure does qualify, voters will be asked to either approve or reject the new law.
See Gay partnership foes turn in referendum signatures
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Federal Judge Stresses Trial Record on Calif. Gay-Marriage Ban
Whatever Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker winds up deciding on Proposition 8, it’s clear he wants an airtight trial record to support it.
Holding his first hearing Thursday on the controversial measure that outlawed same-sex marriage, Walker repeatedly stressed the importance of establishing a record that will stand the test of time.
He told a packed courtroom that he was “reasonably sure” that the challenge launched by two high-profile litigators is “only touching down in this court” and merely a “prelude” for things to come.
“How we do things here,” Walker said, “is more important than what we do.”
He noted that other courts have rendered decisions on same-sex marriage without holding full trials, which he suggested was a “problem.”
Perry v. Schwarzenegger, 09-CV-2292, was filed in May by Theodore Olson, who represented George W. Bush in the landmark Bush v. Gore case, and David Boies, who represented Al Gore. Boies wasn’t present on Thursday. The suit attacks Prop 8 on equal protection and due process grounds.
Walker had already issued a tentative order allowing Prop 8 proponents to intervene and denying a preliminary injunction (pdf). He stood by both orders during Thursday’s 50-minute session.
Olson, a partner in Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher’s Washington, D.C., office who has argued before the U.S. Supreme Court 55 times, nonetheless made a fleeting attempt to persuade Walker to change his mind on the injunction.
“Every day that Prop 8 is enforced perpetuates a tragic injustice” on gays and lesbians, he argued, saying it “brands” them as “second-class citizens, unworthy and different.”
“The Supreme Court,” Olson argued, “has held again and again and again that the right to marry is the most important relationship in life.”
Representing the Prop 8 proponents, Washington attorney Charles Cooper, who was a top Justice Department lawyer during the Reagan administration, warned that the lawsuit could “sweep away” not only Prop 8, but the definition of marriage in 43 states and the federal government.
The Cooper & Kirk partner also argued that marriage has by tradition always been the union of a man and a woman, and said that every Supreme Court case that describes marriage has noted that its central purpose is procreation.
See Federal Judge Stresses Trial Record on Calif. Gay-Marriage Ban Above the Law
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Kalamazoo gay-rights issue will be revisited
KALAMAZOO — The Kalamazoo City Commission is expected to take the first step Monday night in a process that could lead to voters deciding whether Kalamazoo should grant “protected-class” status to gays, lesbians and transgender individuals.
The commission will consider for first reading a new city ordinance that includes revisions from the first anti-discrimination measure that members unanimously approved in December. A subsequent citizen petition drive challenged the measure and resulted in commissioners rescinding it and establishing a subcommittee to attempt to reach a compromise on a new ordinance.
The language coming back to the commission Monday does not change the basic premises, however. It essentially will make it a municipal civil infraction to discriminate against someone in the city in issues of housing, public accommodation and employment because they are gay. Violators could face up to a $500 fine, plus court costs.
The local proposal to ban discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity represents an expansion of existing state and federal laws that prohibit discrimination based on factors such as race, color, religion and sex.
Proponents of the local ordinance — including the Kalamazoo Alliance for Equality, which proposed the original concept — say they’ll support the new measure.
See City gay-rights issue will be revisited
Kalamazoo Gazette – MLive.com
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Gay Couples Forced to Flee US Over Immigration Law
An estimated 36,000 Americans face a choice — separate or move abroad — because they can’t secure green cards for their partners like heterosexual spouses can., said U.S. Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-NY, citing information from the advocacy group Immigration Equality.
Bills have been introduced in Congress to treat same-sex partners like heterosexual spouses for the purposes of immigration but are likely to face a strong fight, both from gay marriage opponents and anti-immigration groups. The 1996 Defense of Marriage Act prevents immigration officials from recognizing gay marriages, even from states where they are now legal.
Proponents see the issue as a basic rights question, and Steve Ralls, a spokesman for Immigration Equality, said he believes the best chance for the legislation is as part of a larger immigration bill.
But other immigration advocates want to keep the issues separate, fearful of bogging down an already tough fight. Kevin Appleby, migration policy director for U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said the push for same-sex partners in immigration is about getting recognition in federal law for gay marriage — which he opposes.
”It’s an unholy marriage of the immigration debate and the same-sex marriage debate,” he said. ”It’s very combustible.”
Lown’s decision last month brought the issue to an unlikely place, a town of 90,000 where ranchers and roughnecks from the vast open lands come to do their banking and send their kids to the regional state college. The town’s only other recent brush with national fame came last year when it housed the hundreds of children taken from a polygamist sect’s ranch in nearby Eldorado.
See Gay Couples Forced to Flee US Over Immigration Law
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Nev. overrides guv’s partnership bill veto
The Assembly overrode Gov. Jim Gibbons’ veto on a 28-14 vote Sunday and changed state law so that domestic partners, whether gay or straight, have many of the rights and benefits that Nevada offers to married couples.
The Assembly’s vote — the bare two-thirds majority needed — followed the state Senate’s similar decision, with no votes to spare, a day earlier to make the historic change in state law over the conservative Republican governor’s objections. Assemblywoman Sheila Leslie, D-Reno, termed SB283 “the most important civil rights legislation we have had in all my years here,” adding the law change ensures “justice for all, not justice for some.” Leslie said proponents of the new law were asking “that their government give them the ability to choose who they will live with and whom they will love.” SB283 provides that domestic partners have the same rights as married couples in matters such as community property and responsibility for debts. It also prohibits discrimination against domestic partners.
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For gay couples, marriage entwines emotions, rights
SACRAMENTO — Yes, tying the knot gave them a huge emotional lift. But getting married also made practical sense to Paul Curtis and Ray Allen.
Marriage means more than just a ceremony and a certificate, according to legal specialists. It gives couples both gay and straight numerous rights and protections, having to do with everything from parenting to health care.
“It’s about being equal in the eyes of the law as well as culturally,” said Curtis, of Sacramento, who married his longtime partner in September, during a brief window of opportunity for gay couples in California.
On Tuesday, the California Supreme Court upheld Proposition 8, which defines marriage between a man and a woman, but left the marriages of 18,000 gay couples intact.
Proponents of gay marriage have vowed to put the issue before voters again, possibly as early as next year.
See For gay couples, marriage entwines emotions, rights
MiamiHerald.com – Miami,FL,USA
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