NewsWrap for the week ending April 30, 2005 (As broadcast on This Way Out program #892, distributed 5-2-05) [Written by Cindy Friedman, with thanks to Graham Underhill, Rex Wockner, and Greg Gordon] Reported this week by Cindy Friedman and Christopher Gaal New Zealand's first civil unions were contracted this week, including one broadcast on national television. The civil unions are legally equivalent to marriages and are available to both same-gender and heterosexual couples. Only a few couples rushed to be among the first to apply for licenses and it wasn't easy for media to find willing subjects for reporting. In the first three days applications were available, 29 couples filed them, including eight heterosexual couples. Foreigners can also contract New Zealand civil unions, but none were known to have applied this week. There's a three-day waiting period after filing before a civil union can be finalized. The first civil union may have been the one celebrated by a couple of four years' standing, Lif Cooper and Kelly Cunningham, in Hamilton. Steve Hay and Glenn Lewis, a couple for seven years in Auckland, took their vows before TV cameras in what was promoted as a marriage. But May Day marks the lesbigay community's big public celebration, when activists Des Smith and John Jolliff formalize their 19-year relationship before Wellington Mayor Kelly Prendergast with a parade complete with brass band to follow. Those two senior citizens were the first in line to apply for a civil union license in Wellington. Civil unions remain politically controversial in New Zealand. The Labour Government affirms its legislation as a significant step towards equality and the Green Party declares it a proud achievement. But the National Party is describing it as "social engineering" and may be making civil unions a campaign issue, a leader of the ACT has suggested that a "cabal of homosexuals" is running the Government's social agenda, and the small Christian Heritage party is vowing to repeal the new law as soon as possible. As a parliamentary vote last week made marriage equality in Spain appear inevitable, there was a brief rebellion this week from some of the public officials authorized to perform marriages. Conservative mayors in at least 3 cities -- Avila, Leon and Valladolid -- told reporters that they would never marry gay or lesbian couples or allow their city workers to do so. Valladolid Mayor Javier Leon de la Riva told "La Razon" newspaper that he did not oppose equal rights for those couples but objected to their unions being called marriages. Spain's Justice Minister Lopez Aguilar responded immediately in a radio broadcast, declaring that public officials must carry out the laws of the land, and reminding them that civil marriage "has nothing to do with religion or sacrament." Some legal experts said officials could even face criminal prosecution for failing to carry out the law. "El Pais" newspaper then reported that the rebellious mayors had generally agreed to allow other city officials to perfo rm marriages for same-gender couples. The mayors' revolt is widely attributed to the Vatican's call for professionals who are Roman Catholics -- as most Spaniards are -- to refuse to cooperate in the implementation of the anticipated law. This week Spanish Cardinal Ricard Maria Carles intensified the Church's rhetoric, telling Agence France-Presse that, "If you give obedience to the law priority over obedience to your conscience, that leads to Auschwitz." Spanish lesbigay activists were incensed by the cardinal's references to the Nazi Holocaust in this context, since thousands of gay men were victims of the Nazi camps, and many were imprisoned under Spain's former dictator Francisco Franco. There may be no Anglican weddings for Canadian gays and lesbians for at least two years, if the upcoming General Synod approves a resolution that the nation's forty bishops unanimously agreed to this week. Only the Vancouver-area New Westminster diocese was officially offering church blessings to same-gender couples, but since the Anglican Church of Canada had not condemned them, the entire national church had been targeted by the global Anglican communion for its part in the denomination's growing schism over lesbigay issues. After three days of discussion behind closed doors, the Canadian bishops resolved to accept the world church's discipline, including Canada's withdrawal from a major international church policy panel, providing an explanation of the reasoning involved in violating the world church's ban on same-gender marriages, and ceasing to perform the wedding ceremonies. The actual statement the bishops issued said, "On the matter of a moratorium on the authorization of public rites for the blessing of same-sex unions, we commit ourselves neither to encourage nor to initiate the use of such rites until General Synod has made a decision on the matter." Canadian Archbishop Andrew Hutchinson told reporters, "In some cultures homosexuality is still a major criminal offense, punishable by heavy prison sentences. We must respect those cultures." Of course civil marriage is open to same-gender couples in most of Canada thanks to provincial court rulings, although the national bill for marriage equality is still in process in the Parliament and threatened by the possible fall of the Liberal Party's minority Government itself. This week four same-gender couples filed a lawsuit seeking the right to marry in New Brunswick, with the pro bono assistance of attorney Alison Menard. New Brunswick, Alberta and Prince Edwards Island are the only Canadian provinces still restricting marriage to heterosexual couples. U.S. state legislatures continue to advance amendments to their state constitutions to deny marriage to gay and lesbian couples. This week the constitutional amendment 70% of Kansas voters approved in early April became effective, and it bars same-gender couples from civil unions and "the incidents of marriage" as well as marriage itself. But Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline believes it does not serve to prohibit domestic partner benefits for civil servants, as is now being contested in Michigan. South Carolina's proposed constitutional amendment passed its final hurdle in the state legislature with a House voice vote this week. The House was agreeing to a Senate language change intended to preserve individuals' rights to enter legal contracts, so the proposed amendment reads, "[M]arriage between one man and one woman is the only lawful domestic union that shall be valid or recognized in this state." In November 2006, the question will appear on general election ballots in the form, "Should marriage be defined as a union between one man and one woman?" The Texas state House this week endorsed a proposed constitutional amendment by a margin of more than three-to-one. During floor debate, Republican Warren Chisum -- the author of this and many other anti-gay bills -- explained that despite its prohibition on recognition of "any legal status ... similar to marriage," his proposed amendment would allow for private contracts between unmarried partners, including insurance policies naming a partner as a beneficiary. Amendment opponents disagree. The proposal moves next to the Texas Senate. The Texas legislature is also wrestling with a proposed ban on gays or lesbians serving as foster parents, one which would be unique in the U.S. Thanks to Republican Representative Robert Talton, that ban was added to the House version of a bill to revamp the state's Child Protective Services system and was passed last week. But this week the Senate refused to adopt the House changes to the more general bill it had already passed. Now the ban's fate is in the hands of a House-Senate conference committee. Elsewhere it's adoptions by same-gender couples that are at issue. In Germany, the state of Bavaria is asking the Federal Constitutional Court to strike down the adoption provisions in the latest version of the nation's registered partnerships for same-gender couples. Those provide only for one partner to adopt the other's biological child, and only with the consent of the opposite-sex parent if applicable. But that's still too much for Bavaria's Christian Social Union Governor Edmund Stoiber, who objects to recognizing gay and lesbian families. A legislative committee in Ireland this week held hearings on the possibility of expanding the constitutional definition of "family", including the possibility of granting same-gender couples the same status to adopt as their heterosexual counterparts. Ireland already allows gay and lesbian couples to serve as foster parents, as activists told the committee. But several religious right groups objected to any change in the definition of "family", opposing recognition for unmarried heterosexual couples as well as gay and lesbian ones. And finally... U.S. President George W. Bush has repeatedly urged the passage of a federal constitutional amendment to reserve marriage exclusively for heterosexual couples, and condemned equality decisions as the work of "activist judges". But he looked a little gay himself this week not on one but two occasions, and in his home state of Texas at that. You may have seen one -- the video of Bush in a garden at his ranch, strolling hand-in-hand with Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah. But he also spoke in Galveston, and recalled the venerable local tradition of an end-of-school-year beach party known as Splash Day. But apparently no one had advised him that for at least a decade Splash Day has been a specifically gay male event. Gay men took up the tradition after official Galveston had backed off from doings that had gotten too rowdy. So although the President was looking for a chuckle or two, he got bigger laughs than he bargained for when he said, "Do you still have Splash Day? You have to be a baby boomer to know what I'm talking about. I'm not saying whether I came or not on Splash Day. I'm just saying, 'Do you have Splash Day?'"