NewsWrap
for the week ending January 22, 2005
(As broadcast on This Way Out program #878, distributed 1-24-05)
[Written by Cindy Friedman, with thanks to Graham Underhill, Rex Wockner, and 
Greg Gordon]


Reported this week by Cindy Friedman and Dean Elzinga


  The top clergymember of the Sikh religion this week issued a 
first-of-its-kind formal edict prohibiting celebration of same-gender marriages in gurdwara 
anywhere in the world.  The jathedar of the Akal Takht in the Indian city of 
Amritsar, Giani Joginder Singh Vedanti, said the very idea of those marriages 
was the product of "sick minds" and that they violate the Sikh code of conduct. 
 He called on Sikhs to act to stop the spread of validation for gay and 
lesbian couples, a trend he described as "anti-human tendencies".
Although a lesbian couple recently celebrated a widely-reported marriage in 
Amritsar, the Sikh holy city, Indians were not the primary target of the edict. 
 The jathedar released his edict just two days before the arrival in India of 
Prime Minister Paul Martin of Canada, a nation with both a substantial Sikh 
population and growing marriage equality.  Martin had come in large part to 
discuss tsunami relief efforts with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, but 
reporters demanded his response to the marriage issue.  At first he responded, 
"This is a question of civil marriage, not of religious marriage.  I would point 
out that we are a country of ethnic and religious minorities, and the purpose 
of the Charter of Rights is to protect minorities, to protect them against 
the oppression of the majority."


  Martin's Liberal Party, which plans to introduce marriage equality 
legislation in the Canadian Parliament in February, actively courts Sikh support, and 
its four Sikh Members of Parliament traveled with Martin.  They and two other 
Sikh Canadian MPs are split on the bill, which the Sikh leadership strongly 
urged them to oppose.
Martin's marriage headaches this week did not end there.  Leader of the 
Opposition Conservative Party Stephen Harper announced a full-scale campaign 
including newspaper ads to contrast their support of "traditional" marriage with the 
ruling Liberals' support of marriage equality.  Although Martin's support of 
opening marriage to gays and lesbians had previously seemed rather lukewarm, 
he responded strongly to the Conservative challenge.  He said, "It's not my 
intention to go into an election.  We want to govern.  Am I ready to go into an 
election to uphold the Charter of Rights against those who would attack it?  
The answer is 'yes'."


  Two Russian gay men this week applied for a marriage license in Moscow, 
only to be turned away at the registry office.  Officials cited the legal 
definition of marriage as between a man and a woman.  The men were Member of the 
Bashkortostan Parliament Edvard Murzin and Eduard Mishnin, the editor of Russia's 
only gay magazine "Kvir" and the Web site gay.ru.  They're seeking to marry 
not because they're in love -- they're not -- but because they're activists 
trying to open legal marriage to same-gender couples.  They believe a formal 
written rejection of their marriage application will serve as a basis for a 
lawsuit, one they said they'd take to the European Court of Human Rights if 
necessary.  But there may be a price to pay -- the day after their rejection at Wedding 
Palace Number 4, police visited the gay.ru office.  They determined it was an 
improper use of the building and ordered the Web site to vacate within a week.


  But in Brazil, a federal prosecutor this week filed for a federal judicial 
order that would require all Brazilian courts to perform same-gender 
marriages.  Joao Gilberto Goncalves, Junior told the Associated Press that he hoped 
both to gain legal rights for gay and lesbian couples and to help reduce 
prejudice and violence against them.  Although the Brazilian Constitution defines 
marriage as between a man and a woman, Goncalves believes it does not prohibit 
marriages to same-gender couples.


  The U.S. law allowing one state to deny recognition to another state's 
same-gender marriages this week survived its first direct legal challenge to reach 
a federal court decision.  The 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, known as DOMA, 
could not truly be tested until some state actually performed gay and lesbian 
marriages, as Massachusetts began to do last year.  The plaintiffs were 
Metropolitan Community Church minister Nancy Wilson and Paula Schoenwether, a lesbian 
couple of 27 years' standing, who married in Massachusetts but are explicitly 
denied legal standing as a couple in their Florida home.  Their attorney 
Ellis Rubin, who is also pursuing two more similar lawsuits apart from any of the 
major lesbigay legal groups, claimed DOMA unconstitutionally discriminates and 
violates basic rights.  But U.S. District Judge James Moody denied there was 
precedent for him to declare marriage to be a fundamental right, and upheld 
the contention of the U.S. Attorney-General's office that procreation and 
child-rearing support a legitimate government interest in restricting marriage to 
heterosexual couples.  Moody denied DOMA discriminates on the basis of sex since 
men and women are equally restricted to marriage with the other gender.  This 
case did not deal with the lesser-known but perhaps more discriminatory 
second section of DOMA, which bars the federal government from extending any 
recognition to same-gender couples, including a wide range of benefits.


  While conservatives cheered that win for DOMA, it might help to stall their 
movement to amend the U.S. Constitution to restrict legal marriage to one man 
and one woman.  Republican President George W. Bush told the "Washington 
Post" in an interview published this week, that at least in the U.S. Senate, the 
Federal Marriage Amendment has no chance of passage until DOMA has been struck 
down by the courts.  The religious right groups that had demanded and won 
Bush's vocal support for the FMA, and responded by turning out voters for him, 
feared this meant he was dropping the issue.  The administration hurried to 
reassure them, promising the President would continue to advocate the need for the 
amendment.


  Louisiana voters chose in September to amend their state constitution to 
define marriage exclusively as between "one man and one woman," and this week 
the Louisiana state Supreme Court unanimously reinstated that amendment.  
Previously a state judge had struck down the amendment for having more than one 
topic, which the Louisiana Constitution prohibits, since along with marriage it 
bans recognition of "a legal status identical or substantially similar to that 
of marriage for unmarried individuals".  But the state's high court found the 
stated goal of "defending marriage" to be a single purpose, with each of its 
provisions serving that objective.  Yet there was some good news for same-gender 
couples in this decision, as the justices declared the amendment will not 
affect any unmarried couples' ability to jointly own property, to contract 
powers-of-attorney with each other, or to make wills in each other's favor.


  Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich this week signed into law the addition of 
"sexual orientation" as a category protected from discrimination in 
employment, housing and credit under the state's Human Rights Act.  Illinois becomes 
the 15th U.S. state to legislate equal treatment for lesbigays and the fifth to 
explicitly include transgenders.


  And finally... in the biggest hoopla in the U.S. "culture wars" since TV 
preacher Jerry Fallwell's group "outed" Teletubby Tinky Winky, the religious 
right is claiming that cartoon character SpongeBob SquarePants is "brainwashing 
children" into believing that gay is OK.  Indeed SpongeBob is one of over 100 
campaigners for respect for diversity including such suspected queers as Barney 
the dinosaur, Bob the Builder, Winnie the Pooh, and some Muppets.  They all 
appear in a music video of the song "We Are Family".  More than 60,000 of those 
tapes are planned to be sent to primary schools in March.


  James Dobson, head of the Focus on the Family media empire, spotlighted 
what he called a "pro-homosexual video" this week in a speech to a Bush 
pre-inaugural dinner party of conservatives including a number of Congressmembers.  But 
it was the American Family Association's Ed Vitagliano who went beyond the 
video -- which makes no reference whatever to sexuality -- to the Web site of 
its makers, the non-profit We Are Family Foundation.  There appears the text of 
the Southern Poverty Law Center's pledge to respect differences, including 
differences in what it calls "sexual identity" along with abilities, beliefs, 
cultures, and race.  Vitagliano wrote of the video, "A short step beneath the 
surface reveals that one of the differences being celebrated is homosexuality."


  Nile Rodgers, who co-wrote the 1979 disco classic, set up his foundation 
and produced the video in response to the "9-11" terrorist attacks on New York 
and Washington.  His hope was to promote healing by teaching children about 
multiculturalism.  He did intend the video to promote the tolerance pledge, and 
even consulted with his foundation's personnel about possibly removing "sexual 
identity" from it.  Their consensus was to retain it.  But Rodgers is 
bewildered by the religious right reaction, and he told the Associated Press, "Nothing 
could be more devastating to the people who believe in me and our 
organization than to imply there's an insidious undercurrent to it."
His foundation's attorney bluntly told the "New York Times" that those 
attacking the video "need medication."


  But the Los Angeles Gay & Lesbian Center seized the media moment to remind 
the public in a light-hearted way of the serious problems of lesbigay youth.  
Center head Lorri Jean said in part, "If SpongeBob is gay, we want him to know 
he's not alone.  The L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center's youth center and 
transitional living program can offer him support and a home if he's ever kicked out of 
his pineapple under the sea or attacked because of his sexual orientation... We 
also invite SpongeBob to join the Center's recently formed gay/straight 
alliance of cartoon characters that includes Bugs Bunny, Tinky Winky, Waylon 
Smithers, and Batman and Robin."