Church and Straight in CT
The Family Institute of Connecticut apparently blew too much money on Question 1 ads to afford a real lawyer.
We bet that’s why Pat Robertson’s non-profit firm, the American Center for Law and Justice, helped them bully the Connecticut Department of Children and Families into removing “open and affirming” churches from a list of gay-friendly resources on the department’s Web site on seperation of church and state grounds.
(No, really, the Family Institute of Connecticut accused someone else of misunderstanding the separation of church and state.)
“A handful of the links related to religious organizations considered to be — what are the words I want to use? — progressive on gay and lesbian issues,” explains Gary Kleeblatt, communications director for the DCF, who says the agency got a letter from the Family Institute inferring a lawsuit from Robertson’s team of cranks could be forthcoming.
Kleeblatt assures us the DCF is still “extremely enlightened to gay and lesbian issues. We welcome gays and lesbians to adopt. We also recognize there are gays and lesbians in our care. But we can’t be seen as endorsing any religious groups.”
Shirley Gadson, pastor of Bridgeport’s open and affirming Open Door Ministries, says, “I think that people have to realize Christ loves everybody and is open and affirming to everyone.”
Family Institute executive director Peter Wolfgang told our parent paper, the Hartford Courant, “We said all along that if same-sex marriage was imposed in Connecticut, the next thing that would happen would be an effort to reeducate Connecticut children.”
Yes, that’s right! First comes gay marriage and then comes … some constitutionally questionable links on the DCF’s Web site. Feel that? It’s the foundations of our society shaking!
fairfieldweekly.com
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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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Religious groups in India have warned they will…
Religious groups in India have warned they will oppose any move to legalize homosexuality as the federal government prepares to hold talks on a law that classifies same-sex acts as crimes.
India’s Hindu nationalist main opposition has in the meantime called for a national debate on the legislation that law minister M. Veerappa Moily last week said would come up for a discussion within the government.
“This is a sensitive issue and warrants a debate within the Indian society at large before arriving at any decision,” said Sidharth Nath Singh, spokesman for the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party.
An Indian court is due to give its judgment on a petition filed by a nonprofit group that has challenged the anti-gay provision of the penal code.
In a news conference last week, Moily refused to spell out his government’s stand on it because it awaits judicial determination. But his comments that the federal home minister was “contemplating” a meeting with his Cabinet colleagues on the law drew widespread coverage in the largely conservative country.
“Hope floats at rainbow parades,” read a caption on a front-page picture from a gay parade in New Delhi in Monday’s Times of India newspaper.
Participants in that march demanded repeal of Section 377 of the penal code, which criminalizes private consensual sex between adults of the same gender in the country. 
Watch a New Delhi march in support of gay rights »
Religious leaders, however, oppose any suggestion to scrap 377, describing homosexuality as “unnatural.”
“We are against calling homosexuality a criminal activity, but we are certainly in principle against legalizing it, because that would mean the state endorsing same-sex relationships,” said Babu Joseph, spokesman for the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India.
Homosexuality “violates fundamental norms of a family,” he said.
See India faith leaders: Anti-gay law must stay CNN International
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We’re Not Alone: Anti-Gay Groups Also Target Jews
Anti-gay religious groups promote their intolerance of GLBT individuals and families, but a less prominent aspect of some such groups is antipathy toward certain religions, and even races and ethnicities.
Once example is the Westboro Baptist Church, based in Topeka, Kansas. Headed by the Rev. Fred Phelps, Westboro-which is made up mostly of Phelps’ extended family-has generated headlines for picketing the funerals of gay people as well as the funerals of fallen military servicemembers killed in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The Phelps clan claim that “God hates America” because this country does not, in their view, aggressively persecute its GLBT See
We’re Not Alone: Anti-Gay Groups Also Target Jews
EDGE Boston
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Gays, Church clash on immigration
Same-sex partner provisions may be cut from immigration reform as religious groups complain.
Tags: Church Sex, Clash, Gays Sex, Immigration Reform, Provisions, Religious Groups, Same Sex, Sex PartnerGay bishop says faith groups key to NH gay marriage vote
New Hampshire became the sixth state to legalize gay marriage on Wednesday (June 3) in part because faith leaders testified that the measure would not impinge on religious rights, according to V. Gene Robinson, the state’s openly gay Episcopal bishop.
When credible Christians, Muslims and Jews advocated for same-sex marriage, it “had a lot of sway with legislators in terms of giving them cover,” said Robinson. “Our message was loud and clear: religious organizations have nothing to fear from civil marriage for same-gendered folks.”
Robinson, who was elected bishop of New Hampshire in 2003, joined his longtime partner in a civil union last year. Under the New Hampshire law, their union will automatically be considered a marriage on Jan. 1, 2010.
“I’m still about 30 feet off the ground, hovering somewhere on high,” Robinson said in a conference call with reporters on Thursday.
The legislation signed by Gov. John Lynch on Wednesday contains explicit legal protections for religious groups that object to same-gender relationships and makes Rhode Island the only state in New England that does not allow gay marriage.
Robinson said separating the civil and religious aspects of marriage and making clear that religious groups would not be required to sanction same-gender weddings was key to the effort.
“We made sure that our … bill here stated and overstated and restated the fact that no religious liberties would be abridged in the embrace of civil marriage — that no religious institutions would be required to do anything against its own beliefs,” Robinson said. “It largely undercut the argument from the other side.”
Two separate studies released on Wednesday concluded that anti-gay marriage groups relied heavily on religious language to successfully push for ballot initiatives in Michigan in 2004 and California in 2008 that outlawed gay marriage.
“A religious opposition requires a religious response,” said the Rev. Rebecca Voelkel of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and an author of one of the reports.
Robinson said, “I think it’s about emboldening legislators to see people like them who identify as Roman Catholic or American Baptist or Methodist or Lutheran (and) say `OK, this … is clearly a person of faith, so despite what the denomination says as a whole I’ve got a fairly firm piece of ground to stand on here.”
See Gay bishop says faith groups key to NH gay marriage vote
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In NH Gay marriage accord reached
ouse and Senate negotiators reached yesterday agreement on a compromise gay-marriage bill amendment aimed at winning a signature by Gov. John Lynch.
Members of a conference committee took just over two hours to agree on language they say gives more emphasis to the Legislature’s intent to protect religious freedoms regarding same-sex marriage.
The bill will be voted on next week, as the third piece of a three-part gay-marriage proposal. Two bills have already passed — House Bill 436, the main bill, and HB 310, with technical changes — but a third became necessary when Lynch said he would veto the bills unless extra protections for religious groups were added. Language in the two bills that exempted clergy from performing marriages that their religions do not accept did not go far enough, Lynch said.
The Senate then passed HB 73, containing language Lynch demanded, but the House vote on May 20 fell short 186-188.
See Gay marriage accord reached The Union Leader
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Anti-gay marriage effort advances
Maine election officials on Tuesday approved the question that would appear on the ballot if opponents of the recently enacted same-sex marriage law collect enough signatures.
Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap announced that the question that will appear on petitions is “Do you want to reject the new law that lets same-sex couples marry and allows individuals and religious groups to refuse to perform these marriages?”
Groups seeking to overturn the law, including the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland; the Maine Family Policy Council of Maine, formerly the Christian Civic League of Maine; and Maine Marriage Initiative could begin circulating petitions seeking to put the question on the ballot as early as Friday.
“We most likely won’t have petitioners out until after Memorial Day,” the Rev. Bob Emrich of the Maine Marriage Initiative said Tuesday afternoon. “We have to get petitions printed and distributed around the state. We also want to make sure that folks are properly trained in circulating petitions.”
See
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Exemption for Religious Foes Of Gay Marriage Debated
As a growing number of states legalize same-sex marriage, there is growing attention on exemptions for religious institutions and individuals who find the concept morally objectionable and religiously untenable. This week, New Hampshire Gov. John Lynch (D) said he would sign legislation to make his state the sixth to legalize gay marriage if the legislature ensured religious protections.
Vermont and Connecticut have enacted laws that exempt clergy from performing same-sex marriages and give religious groups the right to refuse their facilities for same-sex marriage celebrations and allow them to refuse to provide insurance benefits to same-sex partners.
With those exemptions, said George Washington University constitutional law professor Ira Lupu on the legal blog Concurring Opinions, “religious conservatives and secular progressives now have the opportunity to reach political bargains.”
See Exemption for Religious Foes Of Gay Marriage Debated Washington Post * Tags = gay men gay news lesbian news transgender bisexual
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Gay protest broken up in Moscow
Police in Russia have broken up a protest by gay rights activists in Moscow, staged to coincide with the final of the Eurovision Song Contest.
Some 30 campaigners had gathered near a university in defiance of a ban on their march and many were dragged away by police when they shouted slogans.
British gay rights activist, Peter Tatchell, was among those detained.
A counter-demonstration by nationalist and religious groups was allowed to go ahead elsewhere in the Russian capital.
The gay rights group had been waving flags and chanting slogans demanding equal rights and condemning the treatment of gays and lesbians in Russia.
At least 20 were arrested as police moved in to disperse the protest.
As he was being taken away by police, Mr Tatchell shouted: “This shows the Russian people are not free.”
Speaking from a police station, he later told the BBC: “The way the police violently broke up our peaceful protest is an indication of a drift toward authoritarianism that is affecting all Russians.”
‘Satanic’
The organiser of the gathering and leading campaigner, Nikolai Alexeyev, was also detained at the event, which took place in the south-west of the city.
See Gay protest broken up in Moscow
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