NewsWrap
for the week ending April 23, 2005
(As broadcast on This Way Out program #891, distributed 4-25-05)
[Written by Cindy Friedman, with thanks to Graham Underhill, Rex Wockner, and 
Greg Gordon]


Reported this week by Jon Beaupré and Cindy Friedman


  The selection of German Cardinal Josef Ratzinger as the next Pope portends 
a continuing hard line against homosexuality and political action against 
legal recognition of same-gender couples by the Roman Catholic Church.  In the 
eyes of most lesbigay activists, Ratzinger represents the worst possible choice.  
In more than two decades as head of the Vatican's Congregation for the 
Doctrine of the Faith, formerly known as the Inquisition, Ratzinger was the active 
enforcer of conformity to tradition under John Paul II, and the actual author 
of much of the anti-gay rhetoric of the late Pope's reign.  


  Among numerous examples was Ratzinger's 1986 letter directed primarily to 
U.S. bishops "on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons" saying, "Although the 
particular inclination of the homosexual person is not a sin, it is a more or 
less strong tendency ordered toward an intrinsic moral evil; and thus the 
inclination itself must be seen as an objective disorder."


  He told U.S. bishops in 1992 that, "[I]t is not unjust discrimination to 
take sexual orientation into account" in an effort to block gays and lesbians 
from serving as teachers, coaches, or military servicemembers, or from adopting 
children.


  He also penned the Vatican's 2003 outline for political opposition to equal 
status for gay and lesbian families -- "Considerations Regarding Proposals to 
Give Legal Recognition to Unions Between Homosexual Persons" -- which 
declared, "There are absolutely no grounds for considering homosexual unions to be in 
any way similar or even remotely analogous to God's plan for marriage and 
family.  Marriage is holy, while homosexual acts go against the natural moral 
law.... The Church teaches that respect for homosexual persons cannot lead in any 
way to approval of homosexual behavior or to legal recognition of homosexual 
unions.  Legal recognition of homosexual unions or placing them on the same 
level as marriage would mean ... the approval of deviant behavior."  


  In Ratzinger's first week as Pope Benedict XVI, Spain took a major step 
toward becoming the first predominantly Roman Catholic country to open legal 
marriage and adoptions to gay and lesbian couples.  The Socialist Government's 
bill declaring that, "Matrimony shall have the same requisites and effects 
regardless of whether the persons involved are of the same or different sex" was 
approved by a 57% majority in the national parliament, the Congress of Deputies, 
opposed only by the Partido Popular.  Lesbigay activists cheered the vote from 
the galleries and called the action historic.  The Spanish Senate is also 
expected to approve the bill to make it law within the next few months.
Ratzinger himself had earlier described the bill as "profoundly negative" and 
"destructive of family and society," while Spain's Conference of Catholic 
Bishops had said in a statement that it "introduced a dangerous and disruptive 
element into the institution of marriage, and thereby into our just social 
order."  


  This week it was the head of the Vatican's Pontifical Council for the 
Family, Colombian Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, who denounced the parliamentary 
vote on behalf of Ratzinger-cum-Benedict's new regime.  In an interview with 
Italy's "Corriere de la Serra" newspaper, he called on Spanish Christians to 
conscientiously resist the law, saying those in any relevant professions should 
refuse to cooperate in the implementation of same-gender marriages even if it 
cost them their jobs.  He said, "A law as profoundly iniquitous as this one is 
not an obligation, it cannot be an obligation.  One cannot say that a law is 
right simply because it is law."  He said the bill represented "the 
destruction of the family" and that adoption rights were "the most senseless and 
negative" aspect of it.  He added that, "The Church does not accept homosexuals being 
the target of jokes, insults and inhumane expressions.  They are people who 
deserve all our love, our support and our aid."


  It's looking more and more as if the Canadian Government's bill for 
marriage equality will never reach its final parliamentary vote.  This week a motion 
of no confidence, which might come to the floor as early as mid-May, was filed 
against that minority Liberal Government.  If it succeeds, a new national 
election would follow in June, and all legislation in progress would die.  While 
it remains technically possible for the marriage bill to be enacted this 
legislative session, it's becoming ever more likely that filibuster tactics by the 
Opposition Conservative Party could stall it at its second Parliamentary 
reading.  This week Paul Martin gave the first nationally televised address by a 
Canadian Prime Minister in a decade to apologize for the corruption scandal that 
has set his party well behind the Tories in recent polls.  He promised he'd 
call for an election himself within a month of the release of the final report 
of the official investigation.  That isn't expected for another six months, 
and the other parties aren't likely to wait that long.


  A French male couple this week lost a second round in their appeal of the 
government's annulment of their June marriage.  An appeals court in Bordeaux 
upheld the July ruling of a trial court supporting the annulment, and declared 
that it's up to legislators to change the definition of marriage that restricts 
it to heterosexual couples.  But Stephane Chapin and Bertrand Charpentier are 
appealing next to the high court of appeal and remain firm in their intention 
to go to the European courts if necessary.  
France does offer registered partnerships for same-gender couples that carry 
many of the benefits and responsibilities of marriage.


  Slovenia's parliament will be taking up a bill to create registered 
partnerships for gays and lesbians, following its approval by the Cabinet at the end 
of March.  The Government proposal would extend legal recognition to those 
partnerships in areas including housing and property, inheritance, and hospital 
visitation.


  Switzerland's Government is urging the nation's voters to approve a 
proposed upgrade of same-gender registered partnerships there.  Lawmakers created 
partnerships just last year with most of the benefits and responsibilities of 
marriage, but citizens will decide on June 5th whether to extend them.  Justice 
Minister Christoph Blocher told reporters this week that the initiative will 
improve the handling of partners' inheritance and pensions, and will also 
clarify the status of foreigners who join their Swiss partners.  Blocher said the 
partnerships need the kind of legal framework that marriage has, but he also 
emphasized that the upgraded version is not marriage, does not include adoption 
rights, and is not about promoting homosexuality.
In 2002, the Swiss canton of Zurich became the first polity anywhere to 
approve legal recognition of same-gender couples in a public election -- and did so 
by a landslide 63%.


  Connecticut this week became the second U.S. state to create civil unions 
for same-gender couples carrying all the state-level benefits of marriage, 
effective October 1st.  Republican Governor Jodi Rell signed the bill into law 
within an hour of its final approval by more than three-quarters of the state 
Senate.  That last vote was needed after the House added a rider declaring that 
marriage is still restricted to heterosexual couples, a rider that helped win 
Rell's endorsement.  She said, "I have said all along that I believe in no 
discrimination of any kind and I think this bill accomplishes that, while at the 
same time preserving the traditional language that marriage is between a man 
and a woman."  
That kind of compromise has failed to satisfy some activists on both sides of 
the issue, with some lesbigays hurt by the rider and determined to battle on 
for full marriage equality, while groups like the Family Institute of 
Connecticut are planning demonstrations to protest the new law and election campaigns 
to unseat those lawmakers who supported what they see as marriage by another 
name.
The Associated Press has repeatedly described Connecticut as the first state 
to enact civil unions without the spur of a state Supreme Court decision, but 
that may be slighting California's registered partnerships which are very 
nearly as powerful.


  Also within the borders of the U.S. this week, the Tribal Council of the 
180,000-member Navajo Nation unanimously voted to restrict marriage to one man 
and one woman.  The three states surrounding Navajo lands -- Arizona, New 
Mexico and Utah -- all have their own prohibitions against same-gender marriage.  
Council delegates cited traditional religious beliefs despite the Navajos' 
historic recognition of "nadleeh," biological males who lived female cultural 
roles and had sexual relations with men.
Last year the Cherokee Nation's Tribal Council similarly voted to restrict 
marriage to one man and one woman, in reaction to an Oklahoma lesbian couple's 
application for a tribal marriage.


  And finally... officials in the Russian Federation are puzzling over gay 
cruising.
In the state of North Ossetia, traffic police have advised the Interior Mi
nistry that cars without license plates or with plates only on the back are 
usually driven by those they describe as having "untraditional sexual orientation". 
 This issue was raised by many in the Ministry staff at a recent meeting, and 
a spokesperson told the Interfax News Agency last week, "We haven't found any 
explanation to this phenomenon, and we have asked psychologists and doctors 
to give us an answer."
Meanwhile, Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov described picnickers and gay men as 
environmental threats at a city government meeting last week.  He advocated for 
establishing a golf course in Moskvoretsky Park on the Moscow River to protect 
its environment from both.  He didn't mention that elsewhere golf courses 
themselves have often been labeled a serious environmental threat due to runoff 
from their intensive use of fertilizers and pesticides.