NewsWrap for the week ending February 21, 2004 (As broadcast on This Way Out program #830, distributed 2-23-04) [Written by Cindy Friedman, with thanks to Graham Underhill, Fenceberry, Rex Wockner, Ross Stevenson, and Greg Gordon] Anchored this week by Rick Watts and Cindy Friedman Spain has its first legally recognized same-gender co-parent, as a judge in Pamplona approved a lesbian's co-adoption of her partner's twin girls. The couple have lived together for 7 years and the twins, conceived by artificial insemination, were born last year. The family lives in the Spanish state of Navarra, which offers some legal recognition to gay and lesbian domestic partners. The state legislature had acted in 2000 to extend adoption rights to them, and this week's court action put that new law into effect. Reportedly Aragon and the Basque region are now drafting bills to open adoptions to same-gender couples, while Catalonia's state Government announced this month it will be moving to upgrade a current law that gives gay and lesbian couples the lesser legal status of "lodging" children. While parental status for a couple is new, individual gays and lesbians can adopt children anywhere in Spain. Repeated multi-party efforts to create national legal standing for Spanish same-gender couples have so far all been defeated by the ruling Partida Popular. The Australian Capital Territory's newly passed first-in-the-nation law opening adoptions of unrelated children to gay and lesbian couples is under attack. The territorial Liberal Party, which vigorously opposed the move, has asked Australia's Attorney General to review the new ACT measure's compatibility with federal law, the national constitution and international conventions. The Liberal Party serves as the Opposition in the ACT but leads the ruling Coalition nationally, and its Prime Minister John Howard has publicly opposed the ACT adoption measure. Although it's rarely used, the Australian Parliament has the power to overturn territorial laws, as it did when the Northern Territory attempted to legalize medically-assisted suicide in 1997. The federal Parliament does not have that same power over the six Australian states. The Australian Christian Lobby is also urging the Australian Government to strike down the ACT law, and to review the Tasmanian and West Australian laws recognizing same-gender couples. In the state of Victoria this week, some 300 gay and lesbian couples participated in a mass commitment ceremony this week as part of Melbourne's annual Midsumma pride festival -- and to protest their lack of federal recognition in Australia. A commitment ceremony was also held last week by six gay and lesbian couples at Auckland's annual Big Gay Out festival before some 1,000 spectators. The action was intended to demonstrate support for a civil unions bill to be introduced this month in the New Zealand Parliament. Prime Minister Helen Clark told the festival crowd that she supports the move and believes a majority of the Parliament will too, although she expects Members will be free to vote their consciences. In Canada, where the number of licensed gay and lesbian marriages has now passed 16,000, it's now official that the federal enactment of marriage equality will be further delayed. The Supreme Court of Canada has moved its hearing on related questions submitted by the federal Government from April to October. The Liberal Government had requested the delay after submitting an additional question in the wake of Paul Martin replacing the retiring Jean Chretien as Prime Minister. While the Government did not appeal provincial court rulings for marriage equality in Ontario and British Columbia, it has sought the advice of the nation's highest court before submitting marriage legislation to the federal Parliament. In an ironic turn, the Canadian Government is also delaying its earlier move for divorce law reforms, since legislation to open marriage to gays and lesbians will also require changes to the divorce statute. The same-gender marriages performed so far have no option for dissolution under current Canadian law. In the U.S., what the "San Francisco Chronicle" dubbed "marriage mania" continued in that city by the sea. More than 3,500 gay and lesbian couples have married over the last week-and-a-half with licenses issued at the behest of Mayor Gavin Newsom. On Valentine's Day alone, several hundred couples had to be turned away simply because of overload for the clerk's office, which is now requiring that appointments be made in advance by phone. The lines seem likely to continue for awhile, as two trial court judges have now rejected requests from religious right groups for immediate court orders to stop the licensing. Those groups' two cases have now been combined and will be heard at a later date. San Francisco has filed its own lawsuit against the state to uphold the marriages, maintaining it's an issue of equality protected by the state constitution. California's new Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has stepped in, declaring that San Francisco is violating state law by issuing the licenses and ordering Democratic Attorney General Bill Lockyer "to take immediate steps" to halt that. Schwarzenegger expounded on this theme to cheers at the state convention of his Republican Party. But Lockyer -- a likely future gubernatorial candidate -- seemed in no great hurry, though he noted that he must respond to San Francisco's lawsuit against the state within 30 days and promised to defend state law vigorously there. But his office also sees no threat to public safety in the San Francisco marriages that would require an immediate shutdown, and he called on all sides to "tone down the rhetoric." While announcing that the Attorney General's office will be seeking a judgment against the city, Lockyer's spokesperson told the "Los Angeles Times" that, "[Schwarzenegger] can direct the Highway Patrol. He can direct 'Terminator 4'. But he can't tell the Attorney-General what to do." Gay and lesbian couples were also briefly obtaining marriage licenses and wedding this week in Sandoval County, New Mexico. County Clerk Victoria Dunlap decided to go ahead and issue the licenses based on the county attorney's opinion that state law did not clearly prohibit it, and that denying them might create liability for the county for sex discrimination. At least 25 same-gender couples quickly obtained licenses in Bernalillo, some of them marrying immediately, while scores more signed up on a waiting list. But then state Attorney General Patricia Madrid stepped in with a legal opinion that the licenses were "invalid under state law," and ordered the county to stop issuing them. Couples left waiting were angered and disappointed. The Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund is working with some of those who did marry to try to gain legal standing for them. Many U.S. state legislatures continue to debate marriage equality, most striving to erect ever higher barriers to legal recognition for same-gender couples. But although marriage equality is dominating discussion in the U.S., there are reasons to recall that gays and lesbians still lack basic civil rights protections at the federal level and in 37 states. This week the Washington state House approved by a 20% margin a bill to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation in housing, employment and financial transactions. It will face an uphill battle in the Republican-controlled state Senate, though, which has defeated similar House-passed measures three times in the last eleven years. And at the federal level, one new appointee of U.S. President George W. Bush has quietly removed all references to sexual orientation discrimination from materials for U.S. employees provided by the Office of Special Counsel, the agency tasked with protecting them should they complain of workplace violations. New OSC head Scott Bloch told the "Washington Post" that he acted out of "uncertainty" as to whether civil service law in fact protects lesbigays. This fails to explain why information regarding same-gender workplace harassment was also deleted, since the U.S. Supreme Court has recognized that's actionable even in private employment. Bloch said sexual orientation discrimination is "wrong" and that he was reviewing the matter, but that he didn't want to publish anything until that review is concluded. The larger Office of Personnel Management, more directly involved in handling civil service issues, has held for 20 years that lesbigays were protected under a general legal clause prohibiting discrimination "on the basis of conduct which does not adversely affect the performance of the employee or applicant." And thus far Bush has not rescinded former President Bill Clinton's 1998 executive order explicitly prohibiting sexual orientation discrimination against civilian U.S. government employees. President Bush this week also by-passed the Senate to make a recess appointment of Alabama Attorney General William Pryor to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Pryor has actively opposed equality for gays and lesbians, including filing a brief in support of the Texas sodomy law that was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court in June. He's the second of only six Bush judicial nominees opposed by the Human Rights Campaign to receive a recess appointment to a federal appeals panel, following Charles Pickering's appointment to the 5th Circuit. On the 11th Circuit bench, Pryor is apt to be hearing the challenge to Florida's ban on adoptions by gays and lesbians. A 3-judge panel of that bench upheld the ban last month, but the ACLU, the American Civil Liberties Union, this week asked the court to reconsider it. And finally... gay and lesbian marriages in San Francisco could make a difference on the other side of the world. Cambodia's revered constitutional monarch, 81-year-old King Norodom Sihanouk, is currently undergoing medical treatment in Beijing. That gives him a lot of time to watch television, including news reports from San Francisco. They inspired him to write in his daily posting on his popular Web site this week that, "as a liberal democracy, I think that [Cambodia] must allow, if they desire, marriages between men and men or between women and women." That would be a first for all of Asia. He also wrote that transgenders, known as there as khteuys, "must be accepted and well-treated in our national community." He asserted that he "respected" gay men and lesbians because, "It's not their fault what they are, for it's the good god who loves diversity of tastes and colors in species of humans, animals, vegetables, etcetera."