NewsWrap for the week ending June 8, 2002 (As broadcast on This Way Out program #741, distributed 6-10-02) [Written by Cindy Friedman, with thanks to Graham Underhill, Chris Ambidge, Brian Nunes, Jason Lin, Rex Wockner, Lucia Chappelle & Greg Gordon] Anchored by Cindy Friedman and Jon Beaupré Quebec's provincial legislature this week passed a Government bill to create civil unions for unmarried couples including gay and lesbian couples. It's Canada's most extensive legal recognition of same-gender couples to date, and remarkably, the vote was unanimous. Premier Bernard Landry told a crowd of cheering and tearful spectators afterwards, "It is with immense pride that we are taking this historic step that will place Quebec at the forefront of modern nations on the question of civil union and family laws." The measure extends all the provincial-level rights and responsibilities of marriage to registered couples, in areas including taxation, dissolution, and health, insurance, and pension benefits. However, a number of marital issues are controlled by Canadian national law. Several lawsuits, including one in Quebec, are in progress seeking full equal marriage rights for Canadian gays and lesbians. Quebec is only the second Canadian province to create a legal domestic partners registry, following Nova Scotia. A couple of important distinctions between civil unions and marriage in Quebec relate to age and dissolution. Marriages can be contracted at age 16 but the partners in a civil union must be 18. Marriages must be dissolved in court, but civil union partners have the option of simply signing a dissolution agreement with a notary. But more importantly, as the result of extensive lobbying, Quebec's civil unions carry full parental rights, including artificial insemination, co-adoption of a partner's child and joint adoption as a couple of unrelated children. The Swedish parliament this week by a more than 4-to-1 margin approved a Government bill to extend adoption rights to registered partners. Although individual gays and lesbians have been able to adopt in Sweden, joint adoption as a couple and co-adoption of a partner's child were among the very few marital rights omitted from the legal registered partnerships created there in 1995. Sweden will become only the fourth country in Europe to allow adoptions by same-gender couples, following Denmark, Iceland and the Netherlands. But unlike any of those, Sweden will allow adoptions of foreign as well as Swedish children. That's significant since only 16 Swedish children were available for adoption in 2000. However, no country commonly seeking foreign adoptions officially accepts gay or lesbian couples as applicants. For the new law to take effect, Sweden must withdraw from a UN convention on adoption that specifies that only single individuals and married couples can adopt. A Swedish Government bill to open artificial insemination to lesbians is currently on hold. One in thirteen gay and lesbian couples in the Netherlands already has at least one adopted child, according to new figures from the nation's Central Bureau of Statistics. The new report counted nearly 50,000 same-gender domestic partnerships, representing an increase of one-fourth over the last five years. Only one in seven of those couples have legalized their union through marriage or registry. Lesbian couples outnumber gay male ones in the Netherlands. Germany created legal registered partnerships for gays and lesbians less than a year ago, and this week for the first time one was annulled. The two men had registered late in 2001 but separated in March after repeated rows over infidelity. Typically German "life partners" must separate for a year before their relationship is officially dissolved, but a court found this couple to be troubled enough to justify an immediate annulment. In the U.S., Governor John Rowland signed into law Connecticut's first move to legally recognize unmarried couples. In winning passage through the legislature, the bill lost explicit references to gays and lesbians as well as many of the rights they had sought. But beginning October 1st, the law will empower individuals to name whomever they choose to make certain medical decisions on their behalf, to visit them privately in nursing homes, and to make emergency calls to their place of employment. The law also orders a legislative committee to study the possibility of gay and lesbian civil unions before the next legislative session begins. Non-biological co-parents won a boost this week from a California Supreme Court ruling involving an unmarried heterosexual couple. The state's high court overturned an appeals court decision that denied any paternity rights to a man who had taken custody of his former girlfriend's son by another man. The California Supreme Court was unanimous in finding that the man's assumption of the father role was more significant than his lack of biological connection to the child. Although the decision made no mention of same-gender former partners, gay and lesbian legal activists say it offers a strong foundation for their future cases. A gay-identified corporation's stock is being publicly traded in the U.S. for the first time. Media and entertainment company GSociety, Inc. is now trading under the symbol GSOC on the NASDAQ. The move came not by an initial public offering but by what's been called a "reverse takeover" as GSociety merged with Capital Development Venture Group, which was already on NASDAQ. GSociety describes its interests as original entertainment programming and production services; travel media and publishing; Web site development and hosting; and professional services of data and market analysis for and about the gay community. Its products include gaywired.com, LesbiaNation.com, QTMagazine.com, the DANCE 1 Video Network, and print publications "MiamiGo Magazine" and "GHighway Gay Pocket Guides". GSociety is only the second gay-identified company in the world to be traded publicly. The first was Australia's Satellite Group, which went public in 1999 only to crash and burn in less than a year, leaving numerous continuing court battles in its wake. While pride celebrations around the world this month commemorate the birth of the modern gay and lesbian civil rights movement in the 1969 Stonewall Uprising in New York City, the site of that historic event is in jeopardy. The location of the erstwhile Stonewall Inn, a gay, lesbian and transgender bar, along with its surrounding streets and sidewalks in Greenwich Village, were named an official historic site in 1999. But now those streets and sidewalks are targeted for two new entrances to commuter train lines, with construction fast-tracked to begin soon after this month's New York City pride march, despite heated local opposition. Two dozen famous gays and lesbians have lent their names to an effort to prevail on New York Governor George Pataki to halt construction. For more information, see the www.SaveStonewall.org Web site. Pride was celebrated for the first time in Jerusalem this week. Police estimated some 4,000 people marched peacefully with rainbow flags and balloons through the center of the city, despite intense opposition from religious conservatives that led to three arrests for incitement of violence. The march opened with a blessing given in Hebrew, Arabic and English. Still to be decided is whether or not the city of Jerusalem will have to cover the costs of the services it usually provides to parades; the city claimed it lacked the funds, and a court has yet to rule in the lawsuit brought by pride organizers. The week began with a huge pride parade in Sao Paulo, Brazil, believed to be Latin America's largest. Police estimated the dancing crowd at some 400,000, double last year's turnout. Mayor Marta Suplicy, who introduced the still-languishing bill for gay and lesbian marriage when she served in the national legislature, officially opened the celebration. Spain's King Carlos reportedly used an anti-gay slur this week. While touring the Madrid Book Fair, he was shown an exhibit of gay and lesbian literature, and according to the newspaper "El Mundo" commented, "Ah, this is the stuff of mariquitas." That's a pejorative term that's been likened to "queer". State Federation of Lesbians and Gays spokesperson Pedro Zerolo responded, "We'd like to think that it was a slip, but it does not seem correct to us that the head of state -- who is also that for gays, lesbians and transsexuals -- should use an outdated and derogatory term." But another head of state -- New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark -- has issued a public apology for her nation's past ill-treatment of gays and lesbians. This week's edition of the gay and lesbian newspaper "Xpress" features an interview in which Clark said, "I would offer my personal apology now on behalf of the Government. It's been disgraceful, of course it has. People have put up with the most appalling discrimination [and] stereotyping, people have been criminalized. Of course it is. Dreadful." It was the popular Clark's third significant apology to an oppressed social group this year, following Chinese and Samoans, although political opponents twitted her for its lower profile. Clark's Labour Government has been extremely gay-supportive. As a victim of lesbian-baiting, Clark has some personal experience of anti-gay sentiment. But while acknowledging the whispers as an attempted smear campaign, she declared, "I'm not a lesbian myself but some of my best friends are, literally. So I can't take it as an insult because it's not wrong in any way to be lesbian." She added, "I just have great faith in Kiwis sorting this rubbish out." And finally... this week's MTV Movie Award for Best Kiss for the first time went to a male-male smooch -- the one between Seann William Scott and Jason Biggs in "America Pie 2". MTV has previously honored a kiss between women. Although Nicole Kidman won Best Actress and other awards for "Moulin Rouge," from the podium she told her costar Ewan McGregor, "I'm really bummed we didn't win Best Kiss. We should've rehearsed more."