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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (Aug. 6, 2004)
2 0 J U S t O U t * august 6.2004 fW^TTHnetus ^ o u t h m inster f 9r e s b i j t e n a n the federal government has not yet opened up the institution in the rest of the country, though it has promised to do so, and that means the Divorce Act has not been mcxlified to recognize married gay couples. M.M.’s lawyer has asked the court to rewrite the Divorce Act to remove language that defines “spouse” as “either of a man or woman who are married to each other." The federal Justice Depart ment responded that the act is, indeed, unconsti tutional as written and should he struck down. Jus tice Ruth Meshur will hear the case Sept. 13. (^hurch C o m p a n io n s in A c tio n S u n d a y W orship 10 :0 0 a m ) e & t & u le Our professionals zinll arrange your delivery Teleflora T / jtcwbsi/ Don Duncan owner A U S T R IA he Austrian news magazine Prnfil has pub lished photos of priests fondling and kissing net minister. Prime Minister Paul Martin seminarians at the St. Polten seminary near selected Member of Parlia ! Vienna. It also said some 40,000 pom pictures ment Scott Brison of Nova were found on computers on the premises. Scotia as minister of public works and government ser The director of the seminary and his assis tant quickly resigned. The Austrian Bishops vices July 20. j Conference is investigating the allegations. Brison, 36, came out in December 2002 as he sought the federal Tory leadership IN T E R N A T IO N A L Scott Brison post. He did not win that nternational statistics do not support the position and later jumped to the Liberal Party. argument of U .S. conservatives that allowing same-sex marriage will undermine traditional C O L O M B IA marriage, a study has found. ay couples attended Mass at the Catholic Research hy University of Massachusetts J cathedral July 4 in Bogota wearing T-shirts economist Lee Badgett, for the Council on Con denouncing Vatican homophobia. Fellow worship temporary Families and the Institute for Gay and pers reportedly responded with surprise or hostility. Lesbian Strategic Studies, found that Scandi navia’s marriagelike registered partnerships and “Homophobia is not Christian,” the shirts the Netherlands’ full same-sex marriages have had said. Gayness is “a fact of nature that no human can change," said one of the protesters, Gabriel no measurable impact on opposite-sex marriage. Medina. There have been no increases in divorce, cohabi tation or out-of-wedlock childbirth, and Denmark S P A IN has seen an increase in the heterosexual marriage pain’s Roman Githolic Church urged its fol rate since the country instituted same-sex regis tered partnerships in 1989, the study said. lowers July 20 to fight Prime Minister José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero’s plan to legalize full same-sex Badgett found that 77 percent of Norwegian marriage. According to The Los Angeles Times, couples with children and 75 percent of Dutch Spain’s leading bishops denounced gay marriage as couples with children are married. The figure in an aberration of nature and an unprecedented the United States is 72 percent. affront to traditional values. “The Scandinavian and Dutch experience suggests that there is little reason to worry that “Legal recognition of homosexual unions, and especially placing it on the same level with mar heterosexual people will flee marriage if gay and lesbian couples get the same rights,” Badgett riage, would constitute said July 1 3. an error and an injustice with very negative con •*5* sequences for the com mon gixxJ and the future ay Pride parades continued around the of sixriety,” the bishops world in early July. About 3,000 people stated. Legislation legal marched in heavy rain July 3 through the center izing gay marriage likely of Dublin, Ireland. According to UTV: “Lorries (trucks] blasting out ’80s electro-pop music will he intrixluced in Parliament in September accompanied the motley assortment of 6-fcx>t drag queeas, sailors, devils and angels lost in a sea José Luis Rodriguez and enacted in January. A poll released July 22 of pink feather boas. Marchers dressed as giant Zapatero found that 70 percent of walking sperm followed youth groups, AIDS Spaniards support same-sex marriage. Only 11.6 awareness groups, a gay hiking club and a deaf gay percent of the 2,479 people questioned said they group as they danced through the capital.” were quite or very opposed. Between 700,000 and 1 million Spaniards However, the poll also found that about 20 turned out for Madrid’s 26th Gay Pride parade percent of Spaniards consider homosexuality July 3, organizers said. This years slogan was unnatural and that 4 percent think it should he “The Time Is Right," a reference to the new illegal. About one-third said it would he a seriixis Socialist government’s promise to legalize full problem if one of their kids was having gay sex. same-sex marriage. The poll, conducted by the Center for Stxio- Some 50,000 people attended London’s logical Investigations, has a 2 percent error margin. Pride celebration July 3. The parade, from Hyde Park to Trafalgar Square, featured more than 30 SO U TH A F R IC A floats and a dozen samba hands. A “ Big Gay C ‘Hith African gay groups filed an action July 8 Out” concert followed in Finsbury Park. O in the Johannesburg High G xirt to overturn “Not that long ago there were important the common law definition of marriage, which political issues that people were angry about, allows only for opposite-sex unions. like Section 28. Now we are hopefully going to The South African Constitution is one of see the Partnership Bill go through Parliament, only a few in the world that explicitly bans dis so this is a celebration," said gay actor Sir Ian crimination based on sexual orientation. While McKellen of The Lord of the Rings fame. “This South African laws and court rulings are consid parade helps say to people who haven’t come ered to be some of the most gay-friendly on the (Hit yet, ‘There’s nothing to he frightened of.’ ” planet, it is generally acknowledged that societal Section 28 was a 1988 law that banned local attitudes toward homosexuality have not governments and schools from promoting evolved at the same pace. homosexuality or “the acceptability of homo- •5* 12250 S W Denney Road (at Hall Blvd ) Beaverton, OR 97008 www.southmin.com I 503 644 2073 [ A U N ITED K IN G D O M ruisy toilets along a highway in Wales were ^dem olished by officials of the Welsh Assembly Government because of distress con cerning men using them for “cottaging,” as tea room cruising is called in the United Kingdom. The bathrooms were at a picnic site off the A449 highway between Newport and Usk in Monmouthshire, the icWales Web site reported July 9. Toilets that are structurally less-friendly to sexual hixikups may.be built in a few months, the report said. 503 ) 642-9992 1 - 800 - 356-1884 ( Aloha Market Centre 2 0 455 S W TV Highway www.westsideflorist.net THERE ARE MORE POSITIVE THINGS IN YOUR LIFE THAN HIV. You don't give up, we don't give up. For more than zo years scientists have been discovering and developing treatments for HIV and AIDS. The fight continues. Now, more intenseley than ever, and we need your help. If you are at least 18 years of age, are HIV positive, and have never taken HIV drugs you may qualify to participate in a clinical research study. We are currently studying the safety and effectiveness of marketed HIV drugs in investigational combinations. All study related office visits, medical exams, and study medications are provided at no cost to patients. For more information, please contact: Fanno Creek Clinic 2400 SW Vermont Street • Portland, OR 97119 (SOJ) 4 510 915. Ext. 30 Canadian couple Stephen Dunbar (left) and Rob Edge leave a Yukon courthouse July 14 after judges ruled in favor of same-sex marriage CANADA trial court in the Yukon Territory ordered the government to give a gay couple a mar riage license July 14. Territorial Premier Dennis Fentie accepted the ruling and said there would he no appeal. Rob Edge and Stephen Dunbar married three days later. The court redefined marriage in the Yukon as the voluntary union for life of two people to the exclusion of all others and declared the old definition “unconstitutional.” “Hopefully someday nohody will question why same-sex couples want to marry— they’ll know it’s for the same reasoas as everyone else," Edge said. The court said it is “inconsistent" for the feder al government not already to have legalized same- sex marriage in the Yukon given that it chose not to challenge court decisions that legalized same- sex marriage in the provinces of British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec during the past 14 months and that it has announced plans to rewrite federal marriage law to include same-sex couples. “The judge agreed that justice delayed is jus- tice denied,” said Martha McCarthy, who repre sented same-sex couples in rhe Ontario and Quebec marriage challenges. “ He rejected the federal government’s arguments that courts should stand idly by” while the Canadian Supreme Court answers some questions regard ing same-sex marriage that the federal Parlia ment asked it to consider. “This ruling sends a message that govern ments across the country must now accept th e.. right of same-sex couples to marry in a civil ceremony,” said Laurie Arron, advtx:acy director for the national gay lobby group Egale. “It is sim ply unacceptable to maintain the fiction that capacity to marry, which is federal law, is differ ent from one province or territory to the next. There is one law for the whole country, and that law includes same-sex couples. Governments who don’t accept that are leaving themselves open to legal challenges and liability for costs.” The latest poll numbers show that 57 per cent of Canadians approve of full same-sex mar riage and that 38 percent oppose it. A -9» i~ anada may he about to see its first same-sex divorce. Two Toronto women, identified only as M.M. and J.H., got married June 18, 2003, eight days after Ontario legalized full marriage for gay couples. Now they have petitioned the Superior Court of Justice to end their union. But there’s a catch. Same-sex marriage was legalized by court orders in Ontario, British Columbia, Quebec and the Yukon Territory. But I C
