2 0 J U S t O U t * august 6.2004
fW^TTHnetus
^ o u t h m inster
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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.
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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*
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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.
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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