Friday December 29, 2006 SGN.org |
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Volume 34 Issue 52 |
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Friday, Aug 29, 2008
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Rex Wockner |
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| International News | |
| ITALIAN GOVERNMENT TO INTRODUCE CIVIL-UNION LEGISLATION Italy's government will introduce a bill by the end of January to extend some of the rights of marriage to same-sex and other unmarried couples. The civil-union measure is expected to cover areas such as health insurance, health care decisions, hospital and prison visitation, inheritance, immigration, transfer of leases, and alimony. Prime Minister Romano Prodi told local media that such a law will be a "fundamental step forward." EURO COURT: SISTERS NOT EXEMPT FROM INHERITANCE TAX The European Court of Human Rights ruled 4-3 on Dec. 11 that two elderly British sisters who have lived together all their lives have no right to an exemption from inheritance taxes. Joyce and Sybil Burden had argued that British law discriminates against nonromantic couples in granting an exemption only to married opposite-sex couples and same-sex civil-union couples. The sisters' house was built for $20,000 in 1965 but is now worth $1.72 million, well above the inheritance tax-free threshold. When one sister dies, the other will owe about $120,000 in inheritance tax. Since they don't have that money, the surviving sister will have to sell the home to pay the tax. "I am terribly upset by this and I just don't know what we are going to do," Joyce Burden, 88, told the Daily Mail. "If we were Lesbians, we would have all the rights in the world. But we are sisters, and it seems we have no rights at all. It is disgusting that we are being treated like this." The European court also slapped the sisters with a $19,600 legal bill for the case. IRISH COURT REJECTS CANADIAN MARRIAGE An Irish Lesbian couple who married in Canada are not married in Ireland, the Irish High Court ruled Dec. 14. Katherine Zappone and Ann Louise Gilligan were married in Vancouver in 2003 and launched attempts to have their marriage recognized at home in Ireland in 2004. But the High Court said the 1937 Irish Constitution contains no provisions to address marriage between persons of the same sex. Zappone and Gilligan said they will appeal the ruling to Ireland's Supreme Court. The head of the European Region of the International Lesbian and Gay Association, Patricia Prendiville, commented, "It is very disappointing and unfair that two people's love which is officially acknowledged and recognized in one country cannot be treated with equal respect and dignity in another country." Meanwhile, the Labour Party has introduced a same-sex Civil Unions Bill into the Dáil, the chamber of the Irish Parliament whose members are elected by voters. It would extend marriage rights to civil-union couples in areas such as inheritance and taxation. Debate is expected to begin in early 2007. GLASGOW GAY CENTER BANS GAY MAGAZINE The Glasgow LGBT Centre in Scotland has banned long-established ScotsGay magazine from both the center and the privately run cafe and bar on the premises. "We consider the sexual content of the magazine inappropriate for the center," said spokeswoman Ruth Black. "We have to take into account that people as young as 13 are using the place." According to ScotsGay Publisher John Hein, "The bone of contention appears to be what is claimed to be the explicit nature of some of our personal ads -- tame by comparison with other publications -- the fact that, in common with most LGBT publications, we carry adverts for escorts, and that there are willies [penises] on the covers of some of the DVDs advertised by a licensed Gay sex shop in Edinburgh." FAROE ISLANDS BAN DISCRIMINATION The parliament of the Faroe Islands, known as the Løgting, voted 17-15 on Dec. 15 to ban discrimination based on sexual orientation. Similar bills failed in 1988, when only one MP voted to protect Gays, and in 2005, in a 12-20 vote. The new push for the law followed a homophobic attack in a bar in Tórshavn, the capital, on popular local radio host Rasmus Rasmussen, who is openly Gay. Rasmussen and his family also received threatening phone calls after local media reported on the beating. The Faroes, population 47,000, are a self-governing overseas administrative division of Denmark located north of Scotland, halfway between Norway and Iceland. EUROPE NOT OF ONE MIND ON GAYS Residents of the 27 nations that make up the European Union are all over the board on Gay acceptance, the latest Eurobarometer poll has found. Overall, 44 percent support same-sex marriage, but the support ranges from highs of 82 percent in the Netherlands, 71 percent in Sweden and 69 percent in Denmark to lows of 11 percent in Romania, 12 percent in Latvia and 14 percent in Cyprus. Thirty-two percent of those polled support same-sex adoption. Approval ranges from highs of 69 percent in the Netherlands, 51 percent in Sweden and 44 percent in Austria and Denmark to lows of 7 percent in Malta and Poland and 8 percent in Latvia and Romania. The poll is conducted every six months. It questions 30,000 people and has a margin of error of 1.9 to 3.1 percentage points. Majority support for same-sex marriage also was found in Belgium, the Czech Republic, Germany, Spain and Luxembourg. Full same-sex marriage already is legal in Belgium, the Netherlands and Spain. In France, meanwhile, 62 percent of respondents in a different poll said they support letting same-sex couples marry, and 55 percent support Gay adoption. The Ipsos poll, published by the Gay magazine Têtu, questioned 1,008 adults in November. France has offered Gay couples civil unions for six years. COLOMBIAN CIVIL-UNION BILL DIES A civil-union bill that had passed Colombia's Senate died in the House of Representatives Dec. 20. According to the Bogotá daily El Tiempo, "Up until the last moment of the [2006] legislature, [the bill] was on the agenda and when it came time to vote ... the quorum disintegrated." New York City activist Andrés Duque, a native of the South American nation, explained: "The bill was actually brought to the floor for a vote but some cowardly legislators jumped up and left their seats. Incredibly disappointing if not necessarily surprising." The bill passed the Senate in October by a 48-40 vote. It would have set up a registration mechanism and granted registered couples marriage rights in the areas of social security, health benefits, pensions and joint ownership of property. |
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| "Vice President's Gay Daughter Pregnant" --Headline that this column thinks proves we're not in Kansas anymore, Dec. 6. Mary Cheney and Heather Poe's baby is due in late spring. "Dick Cheney's Sixth Grandchild Will Have Two Mommies" --Headline on Mary Cheney's pregnancy, Dec. 6. "The president congratulated them and said he is very happy for them." --White House spokeswoman Dana Perino on Mary Cheney's pregnancy, Dec. 7. "I think Mary is going to be a loving soul to her child. And I'm happy for her. ... Mary Cheney is going to make a fine mom and she's going to love this child a lot." --President George W. Bush to People magazine, Dec. 15. "[Mary] Cheney's no crusader; she has little interest in becoming the poster mom for Gay parenthood. But whether she intends it or not, her pregnancy will, I think, turn out to be a watershed in public understanding and acceptance of the phenomenon. This is the Ellen DeGeneres moment of national politics." --Columnist Ruth Marcus, Washington Post, Dec. 8. "Perhaps [Mary] Cheney's high-profile pregnancy will help the Republican Party come to grips with [the Gay] facts of life. If not, though, she's going to have to explain to her child what mommy was doing trying to help a party that doesn't believe in fairness for families like theirs." --Columnist Ruth Marcus, Washington Post, Dec. 8. "As it happens, in order to move closer to the vice president, Mary Cheney and her family have landed in Virginia -- one of the states with the fewest legal protections for Gay families like hers. Will she become an activist there to better defend her child's rights? Will the vice president? It would reflect badly on both if they didn't. Unassailable, though, is the Cheneys' success at an arguably tougher achievement: maintaining a strong family. Whether you respect their politics, in their personal lives they seem to have achieved an American ideal: a family that manages to respect each other's autonomy while supporting each other's highest goals." --Houston Chronicle editorial on Mary Cheney's pregnancy, Dec. 10. "She has not only injured her child, she has destroyed the work her father has done. She has acted in a way that denies everything that the Bush administration has worked for. She's essentially saying: 'In your face.'" --Concerned Women for America spokeswoman Janice Crouse on Mary Cheney's pregnancy, Dec. 6. "I'd love to marry Portia [de Rossi]. I pray that Portia and I are together the rest of our lives, and I believe we will [be] -- but I'd love to have a legalized commitment, obviously." --Ellen DeGeneres to the British Lesbian glossy Diva, January issue. "I still do things to keep my life as regular as I possibly can. I still go places; I don't have bodyguards with me all the time. I don't have to worry about that yet. I pump gas, I go to grocery stores, I go shopping -- I try to do things and live my life." --Ellen DeGeneres to the British Lesbian glossy Diva, January issue. "I grew up going to church, but I was raised by my uncle who passed away with AIDS a couple of years ago. He was my mother's best friend. And my mother's cousin. He brought me to school every day. He helped me buy my prom dress. He made my clothes with my mother. He was like my nanny. He was my favorite person in the world. And you know, I never really mixed Christianity with how I felt [about him]. I am about faith and spirituality more so than religion. Doing right by others and not judging." --Singer Beyoncé on Gays to Instinct magazine, December issue. "I try to stay away from churches who don't accept Gays. I mean, I can't be a part of phony. It's not God's way. You embrace all people. I think that's what God wants, for all of us to love all of us, no matter who we are, what we do or whatever. And it's not a sin to be Gay. So that's all I got to say. I have my feelings and I speak my mind." --Singer Patti LaBelle, currently on a gospel tour of megachurches, to the Michigan Gay newspaper Between The Lines, Nov. 30. "Paris Hilton ... doesn't really have a vocation. She is basically a celebutante. She changed fame by mining high-fashion poses learned from drag queens." --Lesbian writer Camille Paglia to Us Weekly magazine, Dec. 7. "Ah, abstinence education. Could there be a more dizzy, glaring example of a first-rate BushCo failure? Could there be a more insulting, demeaning program the sole intention of which appears to be to deceive humanity and undermine every succulent human impulse and shove sexuality back into the 1850s and induce 10 million teens to resent and mistrust adults even more than they already do? Verily I say unto thee, there is not." --San Francisco Chronicle columnist Mark Morford, Nov. 29. "In the long-term, Lesbian and Gay identity is doomed. And a good thing too. Like every other expression of human culture, homosexual and heterosexual identities are historically transient. They haven't always existed, and they won't last forever. Indeed, the weakening, blurring and eventual dissolution of the labels queer and straight will be final proof of the demise of homophobia." --Key British Gay activist Peter Tatchell writing in The Guardian, Nov. 27. "[They] wanted me to play this role and my agents and managers turned it down and said, 'I don't think he wants to wear a dress.' So they called back and they said, 'Would he play the Nazi?' And they called me and they said, 'Guess what, we got the role of the Nazi.' And I said, 'I don't want the Nazi, I want the guy in the dress.' And they said, 'Really?' And I said, 'Yes.' And my agent's Gay. I said to my agent, 'C'mon, man.' ... He said, 'I thought it would bother you.' I said: 'No, that's the gag. The gag is people would never expect me to come out in this and I can have a blast with this role. ... [It's] a natural progression: cars, women, Gay man." --Actor David Hasselhoff (of Knight Rider and Baywatch fame) on his new role as the Gay cross-dressing director in a sit-down version of "The Producers" at Paris Las Vegas, to TheStripPodcast.com, Dec. 7. "gettin a boner is good ... you have a nice dick ... so you like me ... are you as hard as i an [sic] now ... hard as a brick ... i would drive a few miles for a hot stud like you ... i always use lotion and the hand ... i have aa [sic] totally stiff wood now ... love to slip them off of you and gram [sic] the one eyed snake ... i just sprung wood ... rather large too ... are you bonered too ... we will make oyu [sic] successful as long as you dont [sic] mind me grabbing your dick once in a while ... i am sooo smitten with you ... so oyu [sic] do have a boner now ... wow what a sight wish i was under your desk ... i would at least pul [sic] it out and say hello to the big boy and the [sic] give it some happiness ... youd [sic] like me to blow you ... and wuld [sic] you let me drink all of your cum" --From 100 pages of disgraced former U.S. Rep. Mark Foley's online instant messages with teenage boys and young men, newly posted at http://www.house.gov/ethics/Page_PDFs/Exhibit%2013.pdf. |
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