NewsWrap
for the week ending July 2, 2005
(As broadcast on This Way Out program #901, distributed 7-4-05)
[Written by Cindy Friedman, with thanks to Graham Underhill, Rex Wockner, 
Linda Farthing, and Greg Gordon]


Reported this week by Jon Beaupré and Cindy Friedman


  The parliaments of both Spain and Canada this week gave their final 
approval to bills to open civil marriage to same-gender couples.  That will double 
the number of nations where gay and lesbian couples can marry, as Spain and 
Canada follow the Netherlands and Belgium.
The Socialist Government's bill was signed by King Juan Carlos and officially 
published soon after the House of Deputies' 56% favorable vote.  It was the 
second vote of approval by that house, necessary to override the Spanish 
Senate's unexpected defeat of the measure last week.
Spain's law declares simply, "Marriage will have the same requirements and 
results when the two people entering into the contract are of the same sex or 
different sexes."
It grants full adoption rights to same-gender couples, one of the most 
controversial points for the law's opponents.  The Netherlands only added equal 
adoption rights to its gay and lesbian marriages later with separate legislation, 
and Belgium's Government is currently working on that.
But in a nod to dissenters, Spain's law also allows public officials to 
refuse to perform marriages for gays and lesbians, although they must appoint 
another official to do so.


  The conservative Catholic group Spanish Family Forum, which organized last 
week's massive march through Madrid in opposition to the marriage bill, before 
the vote this week presented the legislature with a petition adding 600,000 
more names to the 500,000 on its previous petition to the Government.  That 
group has promised both more rallies and a legal challenge.
Prime Minister José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero told the deputies of the move to 
marriage equality, "We have not been the first, but I am sure that we will not 
be the last.  After us there will be many more countries motivated... by two 
unstoppable forces: Liberty and Equality."  
He went on to say of gays and lesbians, "It is true that they are only a 
minority, but their triumph is a triumph for everybody... Their victory makes us 
all better people ... it makes our society better."


  The Canadian Parliament's 54% vote for its Government's Civil Marriage Act 
came a day before Spain's, but Canada's Senate has yet to take up the bill.  
The bill is expected to become law before the end of July.  Of course more than 
3,000 gay and lesbian couples have already married in Canada thanks to 
provincial court rulings, beginning in Ontario two years ago.
Acknowledging that, Liberal Party Prime Minister Paul Martin urged the 
Parliament to passing the measure saying, "For most Canadians, in most parts of our 
country, same-sex marriage is already the law of the land.  Thus, the issue is 
not whether rights are to be granted.  The issue is whether rights that have 
been granted are to be taken away."
But the bill's opponents included more than two dozen MPs from his own party, 
including one who resigned a Cabinet position in order to vote against the 
measure.  Another Cabinet member who opposed the bill chose to be absent from 
the vote.


  The Opposition Conservative Party had worked hard to stall the bill.  To 
reach this week's vote, the minority Liberal Government had to strike deals with 
the smaller Bloc Quebecois and New Democratic Party, first to extend the 
Parliament's session for the first time in 17 years, and then to limit debate on 
the marriage bill.
Tory leader Stephen Harper is determined to make marriage equality a 
centerpiece in campaigning for the next national elections, which are expected next 
year, and promises a future Parliament will "revisit" the issue.
Meanwhile that Tory stronghold Alberta is seriously considering mounting a 
legal challenge to the Civil Marriage Act, even though provincial Justice 
Minister Ron Stevens admits it will be a losing cause.


  The Vatican has actively opposed legal recognition of same-gender couples ar
ound the world.  Its newspaper "L'Osservatore Romano" quickly denounced the 
Canadian and Spanish moves as "violent and direct attacks against the family."


  But lesbigay activists around the world celebrated -- and the parties were 
already scheduled.  The pride season peaked this week with the anniversary of 
the 1969 revolt against a then-routine police raid on a New York City bar, the 
Stonewall Inn on Christopher Street.  That's generally recognized as the 
beginning of the contemporary movement for equal treatment of lesbigays and 
transgenders.  This year's observances consistently demanded marriage equality and 
parental rights as well as equal treatment as individuals.  They also denounced 
homophobia and mourned the community's losses to AIDS.


  Canada's biggest pride event, the 25th annual parade in Toronto, came this 
past weekend before the vote in Parliament.  Police estimated a crowd of more 
than a million turned out to watch more than three hundred units pass by 
despite temperatures exceeding a hundred degrees.  Bill Blair became the city's 
first police chief ever to participate.


  Spain's biggest pride march was set for the weekend following the vote in 
Parliament, but Madrid was already decked with rainbow streamers and the 
partying began almost immediately after.


  Elsewhere in Europe, the pride march in Paris attracted a crowd police 
estimated at about 300,000 spectators, while organizers believed that participants 
and observers totaled more than 700,000.  Either way, it took four hours for 
only one third of the parade to complete its route.  Addressing the marchers, 
the city's openly gay Mayor Bertrand Delanoë called for legislation of 
marriage equality.


  Berlin's venerable Christopher Street Day parade featured some 60 floats 
and 25,000 marchers, and drew a crowd of about 300,000.  The city's openly gay 
Mayor Klaus Wowereit called the event "a show of strength for equality."


  Athens saw its first pride demonstration as four or five hundred people 
marched on the parliament building.  At least one organizer came prepared with a 
mask to avoid TV coverage.


  In the Netherlands, Nijmegen's "Pink Saturday Love Parade" was attended by 
25,000 people.


  Dublin's Gay Pride parade featured a 240-foot-long rainbow flag and 
attracted nearly 10,000 spectators.


  Lisbon's pride marchers were counted in the dozens.


  In Latin America, Mexico City's 27th pride parade filled four lanes of 
roadway for several blocks with thousands of marchers.  Some wore black armbands 
to honor an activist slain last week.


  Lesbigays also marched for pride in San Salvador, El Salvador.


  In Bolivia, one participant counted 200 pride marchers with 10,000 
spectators packing the streets in La Paz.


  And Rio de Janeiro's pride march drew a whopping crowd of 900,000.


  In India, lesbigays and transgenders also marched about two hundred strong 
for five kilometers in Calcutta.  Their primary demand was repeal of the 
nation's sodomy law.


  But there was violence in Jerusalem.  First a court had to force the city 
to allow the fourth pride march there to take place at all, when the mayor and 
city council had moved to block it.  That ruling was entirely favorable to the 
march, with the judge requiring the city to allow street banners in advance 
as it does for other marches -- and ordering Jerusalem's Mayor Uri Lupolianski 
to personally pay the court costs incurred by pride organizers Jerusalem Open 
House.  Jerusalem's police chief, who actually has authority over permits for 
public events, had already agreed to the pride march before the court decision 
-- and went on to deny a permit to a counter-demonstration to be held the 
same day.
Some two thousand pride marchers still had to brave at least two hundred and 
possibly a thousand opponents who stood along the parade route.  Some of those 
counter-demonstrators waved signs like "Homosexuality is a sickness."  Some 
threw excrement at marchers, and one threw a stink bomb as the march began.  A 
dozen Jewish extremists were arrested for trying to block the street.  One 
attacked with a knife, stabbing three marchers, one seriously.  They were treated 
at a hospital but reported in stable condition; the attacker is in police 
custody.


  Back in New York City where it all began, organizers estimated more than a 
half-million participants in the 36th annual march, with a crowd of a million 
watching, although police pegged the spectators at half that.  All five 
mayoral candidates including incumbent Republican Michael Bloomberg were there, as 
was Democratic U.S. Senator Hillary Clinton.


  More than a million people turned out for San Francisco's 35th annual pride 
march.  The city's marriage equality activist Mayor Gavin Newsom was loudly 
cheered.


  Other big U.S. pride marches were held this week in Chicago, Illinois, with 
a crowd estimated at a half-million, and Austin, Texas, with a record crowd 
of over 200,000, as well as a rally at the state capital in Michigan.  But 
smaller cities saw pride marches also, including Atlanta, Georgia; Honolulu, 
Hawai'i; Portland, Oregon; Columbus, Ohio; and Conway, Arkansas.


  And finally... this week's most remarkable pride celebration was the first 
publication of a previously unknown love poem written by the first famous 
lesbian -- Sappho of Lesbos -- about 2,600 years ago.  Nearly all of her 
considerable world-famous body of work perished along the way, but the new bit was 
discovered on the papyrus wrapping of an Egyptian mummy along with other work 
already known to be hers.  A translation of its twelve lines by Oxford University 
professor Martin West was published in the "London Times Literary Supplement". 
 Its opening might express the sentiments of anyone who remembers the time of 
Stonewall and looks at today's pride marchers:
"You for the fragrant-bosomed Muses' lovely gifts,
Be zealous, girls, and the clear melodious lyre:
But my once tender body old age now
Has seized; my hair's turned white instead of dark."