NewsWrap for the week ending July 10, 2004 (As broadcast on This Way Out program #850, distributed 7-12-04) [Written by Cindy Friedman, with thanks to Graham Underhill, Fenceberry, Rex Wockner, and Greg Gordon] Anchored this week by Christopher Gaal and Cindy Friedman The U.S. Senate this week began debating a proposed amendment to the federal constitution reading, "Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman." Even its author Republican Senator from Colorado Wayne Allard admits the Federal Marriage Amendment won't garner the necessary two-thirds majority in the Senate, and many believe it won't even win a simple majority there. But it's on track for a Senate vote in the coming week, and despite similarly weak support the House of Representatives is now expected to take it up in September. On the Senate floor, Allard declared, "We are here today because traditional marriage is under assault. This assault has taken place in our courts and often in direct conflict with the will of the people." Republican Senator from Utah Orrin Hatch told the Senate, "We must act. We need to send a message to our children about marriage and traditional life and values." Democratic Senator from Vermont Patrick Leahy fired back, "I think it's wrong. The Constitution is too important to be made a bulletin board for campaign sloganeering." And indeed while the Senate was debating, Republican President George W. Bush spoke at some length on the same subject at an event in his reelection campaign. The following day he made similar remarks in his weekly national radio address, saying in part: (U.S. President George W. Bush:) "This difficult debate was forced upon our country by a few activist judges and local officials, who have taken it on themselves to change the meaning of marriage... "When judges insist on imposing their arbitrary will on the people, the only alternative left to the people is an amendment to the Constitution -- the only law a court cannot overturn... "If our laws teach that marriage is the sacred commitment of a man and a woman, the basis of an orderly society, and the defining promise of a life, that strengthens the institution of marriage. If courts create their own arbitrary definition of marriage as a mere legal contract, and cut marriage off from its cultural, religious and natural roots, then the meaning of marriage is lost, and the institution is weakened... "For ages, in every culture, human beings have understood that traditional marriage is critical to the well-being of families. And because families pass along values and shape character, traditional marriage is also critical to the health of society. Our policies should aim to strengthen families, not undermine them. And changing the definition of traditional marriage will undermine the family structure... "I urge members of the House and Senate to pass, and send to the states for ratification, an amendment that defines marriage in the United States as a union of a man and woman as husband and wife." The lesbigay advocacy group The Human Rights Campaign immediately responded, saying, "Just days after his administration announced new terrorist threats, President Bush took to the airwaves to promote a discriminatory amendment ranking dead last on the American people's priority list... President Bush and his Congressional allies should focus on the priorities of the American people, not the agenda of their extremist base." Meanwhile U.S. courts are very much involved in the issue. An Oregon court ruling this week brought the more than 3,000 marriage licenses issued to gay and lesbian couples in Multnomah County a step closer to legitimacy, as officials began processing them into the state registry. The registrations began within hours of the state Court of Appeals refusing the state Attorney General's request to block them. A trial court judge had ordered the state to register those marriages -- at the same time as he stopped the county from issuing any more licenses pending binding action by the Oregon Supreme Court or state legislature. The Attorney General's office is expected to quickly appeal to the Oregon Supreme Court to block the Multnomah marriage registrations. Currently the state Department of Justice is claiming that the registrations are merely administrative and that "The state will not be treating [the Multnomah marriages] as valid." Marriage equality supporters, including the state's chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, see the situation differently. But all agree that the ultimate determination will come from the state's highest court. A petition to put a state constitutional amendment against same gender marriages on Oregon's November ballot obtained a record number of signatures, which are now being verified by state officials. There was court action also this week on another U.S. marriage hot spot -- Sandoval County, New Mexico, where Republican County Clerk Victoria Dunlap issued marriage licenses to 66 same-gender couples in February. She believes the New Mexico marriage law is gender-neutral, but stopped licensing gay and lesbian couples when the state Attorney General opined they are not legal. The New Mexico Supreme Court this week unanimously rejected Dunlap's request to terminate the state's restraining order now barring her from licensing same-gender couples pending a trial court decision. Time is running out for Dunlap -- her term as clerk ends this year, as she ran unsuccessfully for a County Commission seat last month instead of seeking reelection to her current post. Also in New Mexico, a group which failed a July 1st deadline to submit signatures for a ballot initiative to repeal the state's civil rights protections for lesbigays and transgenders, has turned its efforts towards supporting the Federal Marriage Amendment. Michigan voters could see a state constitutional amendment restricting marriage exclusively to heterosexual couples on their November ballot, as a petition was submitted this week with one-and-a-half times the required number of signatures. State legislators have already put similar measures on the November ballots in Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Utah, while Missouri's proposal will appear in a primary election in August. Lawsuits for equal marriage rights have been filed in at least eight states, with the American Civil Liberties Union adding Maryland to the list this week. The ACLU is bringing Oregon's lead case and joining with the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund on those in California and New York. LLDEF is also bringing the lead case in the state of Washington as well as the case that's the closest to a top state court -- New Jersey's. And while it's well short of marriage, New Jersey gay and lesbian couples began registering their first legal domestic partnerships this week. Most offices will only begin that process in the coming week, but a few gay-friendly areas added weekend hours as the new law went into effect. South Orange Village Hall registered the state's first couple at one minute past midnight -- M artin Finkle and Mike Plake, who after seven years together for this occasion wore matching red T-shirts reading, "I do". More than 3 dozen other couples were right behind them at that site alone. The state registry, which is also open to heterosexual couples at least 62 years old, confers rights of hospital visitation, medical decision-making, joint filing for state taxes, spousal inheritance tax exemptions, and in the case of civil servants, health and pension benefits. New Jersey's law also prohibits discrimination based on domestic partner status. Also seeking marriage in the courts are 19 lesbigay groups in South Africa. This week they jointly filed a lawsuit with the Johannesburg High Court, challenging the constitutionality of the current Marriage Act's hetero-exclusivity. Since South Africa's post-apartheid constitution was the world's first to explicitly prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation, same-gender couples have won numerous legal victories. But they've made much less progress in government regulations and very little with lawmakers. Spain's highest-ranking Roman Catholic spoke out from the pulpit this week to deny any validity to the legal partnerships for same-gender couples the new national Government plans to create. The primate Archbishop Antonio Canizares Llovera of Toledo declared that, "[I]t is not even valid to use the word 'marriage' ... for these homosexual unions, because they disfigure at its very core what this word expresses..." He further insisted that the mere fact of politicians considering the proposal "demonstrate[s] a grave disorder in the mentality of the prevailing culture," and wanred the politicians themselves that failure to oppose the move "would be really iniquitous." But Spain's leading lesbigay and transgender civil rights organization COGAM fired back at the Church this week. The group gathered 1,261 signatures from Spanish Catholics seeking to be removed from the Church's baptismal lists and to deny the Church the right to use any data concerning them. That's to protest the Church's stance on a range of issues including condom use and equal status for sexual minorities. The Church is able to obtain public funds based on its membership numbers, and COGAM's signatories want to be subtracted. In fact they believe the Church has been inflating its numbers and receiving "unjustified privileges" as a result. Based on a constitutional clause prohibiting any denomination from being a state religion, the group is claling for "the true representative status of the Catholic Church to be circumscribed, examined and regulated in the eyes of citizens of the Spanish state." And finally... British gays and lesbians aren't even waiting for the Parliament to enact the Labour Government's bill to create legal registered partnerships for them. In fact enactment could take quite awhile, since the House of Lords apparently wrecked the bill with an amendment, and even optimistically won't come sooner than 2005. But gay-friendly Brighton -- which created one of the U.K.'s first ceremonial partnership registries -- this week opened the nation's first official waiting list for couples who plan to contract the anticipated legal Civil Partnerships. Physically, the waiting list is a book covered in tasteful pink suede. Couples leaped on the opportunity, with more than a hundred signing up the first day. That meant that in order to sign the waiting list some couples spent two hours... waiting.