NewsWrap for the week ending May 15, 2004 (As broadcast on This Way Out program #842, distributed 5-17-04) [Written by Cindy Friedman, with thanks to Graham Underhill, Fenceberry, Rex Wockner, and Greg Gordon] Anchored this week by Dean Elzinga and Cindy Friedman A last-gasp legal move to stop Massachusetts from performing the United States' first legal same-gender marriages failed this week. Earlier attempts in the state court system to stay the state's highest court's November decision for marriage equality were rejected, so its opponents turned this week to the federal courts. Conservative legal groups based in four U.S. states filed on behalf of Massachusetts' Catholic Action League and 11 state legislators. They argued that the state's Supreme Judicial Court had overstepped its authority in reinterpreting "marriage" to include gay and lesbian couples. U.S. District Court Judge Joseph Tauro disagreed, affirming the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court's authority to resolve state constitutional issues "with finality", including the interpretation of "marriage". The plaintiffs immediately turned to the First U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which upheld Tauro's finding and refused to stop the marriages from taking place. That appellate court did agree to hear further arguments in June, after hundreds of marriages of same-gender couples will have already taken place. The plaintiffs took their case to the U.S. Supreme Court, which this week declined to take it up. As usual, the nation's highest court did not comment on its refusal. While Massachusetts marriages are expected to spawn many lawsuits and headaches for benefits administrators, the biggest question at the moment is the status of non-residents. A 1913 state law prohibits marriages that would not be recognized in the couples' home state, and Massachusetts' Republican Governor Mitt Romney has vowed to veto any bill to repeal that law. State policy for decades had been to ignore that statute, which grew out of the historic controversy over interracial marriages. Massachusetts marriage license application forms include an oath that non-resident couples know of no "legal impediment to the marriage" in their home state, and Romney's administration has backed down on requiring any additional documentation. The Governor has threatened legal action against any clerks who issue licenses to gays and lesbians who are not and do not intend to become Massachusetts residents, but at least 3 communities intend to defy him -- Provincetown, Somerville and Worcester. The law provides for up to a year behind bars and a $500 fine for officials who issue a license "knowing that parties are prohibited" from marriage. Couples who lie on a marriage license application are liable for a fine that's just a small fraction of those for lying on other legal documents. Massachusetts judges have been given wide discretion on the residency issue in determining whether to waive the normal 3-day waiting period between licensing and contracting of marriages. Romney had also written to the Attorneys-General of all the other states, requiring a statement from them if their states will recognize same-gender marriages. There's been one reported positive response so far. This week New York Attorney-General Eliot Spitzer sent Romney the opinion he'd issued in March that New York should recognize legal marriages of gays and lesbians performed outside its borders. That opinion -- which also found those marriages could not be legally contracted within New York -- was issued in response to marriages performed in the town of New Paltz. Rhode Island should be responding shortly, following a request for an opinion by a gay couple there. But the door was slammed shut by New Hampshire Governor Craig Benson this week, as he signed into law a measure to explicitly deny legal recognition to same-gender marriages performed outside the state. New Hampshire law already restricted its own marriages exclusively to heterosexual couples. The new law also creates a legislative committee to review state statutes towards the possibility of civil unions. The Missouri state legislature this week sent on to voters a proposed state constitutional amendment against same-gender marriages. The General Assembly acted in the final hour of its session to put the measure on the November ballot by a margin of 5-to-1. Missouri already has in place a so-called Defense of Marriage law denying legal recognition to same-gender marriages performed elsewhere. A proposed amendment to the Tennessee state constitution against same-gender marriages won preliminary approval last week. 95% of the state House supported the move, but it requires several additional votes in both chambers and cannot reach the ballot any sooner than 2006. Oklahoma voters are already slated to consider a constitutional amendment in November against same-gender marriage, but now those concerns have been carried a step farther there. Last week Governor Brad Henry signed into law a bill to deny legal recognition to adoptions granted to gay and lesbian couples by other states. Oklahoma will continue to recognize one gay or lesbian adoptive parent. U.S. state lawmakers have been at work on other issues as well. This week a Hawai'i move to make "sexual orientation" a category protected from housing discrimination died in a House-Senate conference committee. Each chamber had approved a different version of the bill, but Senators and Representatives could not agree on how broadly religious groups and individuals should be exempted. New Mexico's new civil rights protections for lesbigays and transgenders are not subject to a repeal initiative, state Attorney General Patricia Madrid said in an opinion issued this week. A petition is already circulating to put the repeal question on the November ballot there. Madrid believes that the law passed last year falls into a group exempted from repeal initiatives under the state constitution -- laws providing for the "preservation of the public peace, health or safety." She said the anti-discrimination law "represent[s] an exercise of the state's inherent police powers." Although that opinion is technically considered non-binding, it means the initiative is unlikely to reach the voters unless a court rules otherwise. The Human Rights Act enacted last year covers employment, housing, credit, public accommodations, and union membership. Canadian David Reimer, raised as a girl after a circumcision accident but later choosing more surgery and life as a man, killed himself last week. Under the pseudonym "Joan," Reimer was for 20 years medical literature's poster child for the social determination of gender, with his twin brother as a perfect experimental control. But it took heavy slanting for those medical reports to present Reimer as a happy, healthy girl. In fact he did not adjust well to a female role, was rejected by other children, and suffered physically. On finally learning his history as a teenager, he determined to live as male, and went on to marry and become a stepfather. Reimer emerged from anonymity with the publication in 2000 of John Colapinto's book "As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised As A Girl", and media appearances including Oprah Winfrey's talk show. He hoped that in doing so he could save other children from what he had suffered. Lately his life had taken a grim turn, with the death of his twin 2 years ago and the recent loss of his job and separation from his wife, and Reimer was deeply depressed. His mother profoundly regrets having taken that long-ago medical advice to give Reimer hormones and raise him as female, and she believes that without that history he would not have taken his life. And finally... South Africa this week mourned the death of openly bisexual pop music icon Brenda Fassie at the age of 39. An asthma attack had resulted in cardiac arrest and brain damage that left her comatose her last two weeks. [Fassie singing "Sgaxa Mabhanthi" begins up full, then down quickly and under:] A Xhosa, Fassie was the first major star to rise from one of Cape Town's Black townships, Langa, and she never forgot those roots. Her first breakout hit was 1983's "Weekend Special", more major hits followed in 1998 and 2000, and another album is due to be released soon. She won numerous African music awards and toured internationally. Her career was something of a roller coaster, due in large part to drug problems that included the overdose death of one of her lesbian lovers. She had many relationships with women, but she paid the traditional "bride price" for one of her female partners in 1992, and went on to hold a wedding with another a couple of years ago. She confirmed her lesbian identity on television in the early 1990s and French-kissed a woman in the documentary film "In Bed with Brenda". South Africa's Lesbian and Gay Equality Project held a memorial event for her in Johannesburg and issued a statement that "In our community we thank her for entertaining us, but also for supporting our charitable causes." Fassie was an early supporter of South Africa's first President Nelson Mandela, and Winnie Mandela was present for the first announcement of her death. Among many tributes at her passing, current President Thabo Mbeki said, "She was not only a South African singer, but a pan-African griot, making souls rise in bliss wherever her voice reached." [Fassie song up full for a few seconds, fades out quickly]