"NewsWrap" for the week ending July 15, 2006 (As broadcast on "This Way Out" program #955, distributed 7-17-06) [Written by Greg Gordon, with thanks to Graham Underhill, Bill Kelley, and Rex Wockner] Reported this week by Rick Watts and Sheri Lunn Rulings affecting four U.S. states this week continued the recent spate of court decisions against marriage equality for gay and lesbian couples. In what may be the most troubling for queer legal advocates, a unanimous 3-judge panel of the federal 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated Nebraska's 6-year-old voter-approved constitutional ban on legal recognition of lesbian and gay couples. While prohibiting same gender marriage, the amendment also states that "the uniting of two persons of the same sex in a civil union, domestic partnership, or other similar same sex relationship shall not be valid or recognized in Nebraska," making it perhaps the most restrictive marriage law in the country. The 8th Circuit overturned a lower court decision last year that the ban was too broad and deprived gay men and lesbians of full participation in the political process. Lambda Legal and the American Civil Liberties Union's Lesbian and Gay Project argued that the amendment violated the fundamental rights of gay and lesbian people. But Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning said that "plaintiffs are free to gather, express themselves, lobby, and generally participate in the political process however they see fit." The appellate judges wrote that, "laws limiting the state-recognized institution of marriage to heterosexual couples are rationally related to legitimate state interests and therefore do not violate the Constitution of the United States." The Nebraska law encourages heterosexuals "to bear and raise children in committed marriage relationships." New York's high court used that rationale in ruling last week that the state constitution does not require legal recognition of gay and lesbian couples. The Nebraska decision does not bode well for other federal challenges to existing marriage laws -- certainly not cases originating in Middle America. Equality advocates are now considering their options. Those include an appeal to the full bench of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit, or a petition to the U.S. Supreme Court. A Connecticut Superior Court judge ruled this week that because the state's civil unions law provides the same protections and rights for gay and lesbian couples as marriage, the difference in name alone is not enough to cause legal harm under the state's constitution. Eight same gender couples have sued the state charging that civil unions are inferior to marriage and therefore confer separate-but-equal status. But Judge Patty Jenkins Pittman ruled that, "The Connecticut Constitution requires that there be equal protection and due process of law, not that there be equivalent nomenclature for such protection and process." She further wrote that, "the court rejects the argument that the rhetorical separation of marriage versus civil union is enough to invoke an equal protection or due process analysis." But Ben Klein, a senior attorney with Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders, which represents the couples, challenged that reasoning. He told reporters that "there aren’t very many married people who would trade their marriage for a civil union." Ultimately, Klein predicted, the case will reach the Connecticut Supreme Court. "This is just the first step in what we knew would be a long journey," he said. Massachusetts lawmakers ended debate on 20 different constitutional amendments this week without confronting the most volatile of them on their agenda: a proposal to ban same gender marriage in the only U.S. state where it's legal. The amendment would have to win the support of 50 of the 200 lawmakers during this and the 2007/2008 legislative session before it could be put to the voters. The move to recess the state's special Constitutional Convention until November 9th delays a decision on the politically charged issue until after the upcoming general election. Referring to legislative debates on the proposed ban since it was first introduced in 2002, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force's Matt Foreman lamented that the state's queer families "have had to endure 16 yes or no votes about the validity of their relationships... This playing with people's lives to advance narrow political and partisan interests is beyond cruel." The amendment, which supporters hope to place on the 2008 ballot, would ban future same gender marriages in Massachusetts. The state's Supreme Judicial Court rejected a legal challenge this week to the constitutional validity of the proposal itself. But the Court also said that if the ban is ultimately approved, the state would have to continue to recognize the more than 8,000 lesbian and gay couples who've married there since they became legal in May 2004. And the Tennessee Supreme Court ruled late this week that the American Civil Liberties Union did not have standing to file a lawsuit against that state's proposal to ban legal recognition of same gender couples. The ACLU had charged that the state failed to meet its own notification requirements for the November ballot measure, arguing that a six-week delay had hampered opponents' ability to mobilize against the amendment. The justices also concluded that widespread media coverage of the issue well before the notification was formally issued muted that argument. Tennessee already has a law banning same gender marriage, but lawmakers who supported the proposed amendment said they wanted a constitutional restriction in case the existing law is overturned. Forty-five U.S. states have specifically outlawed same gender marriage through statutes or constitutional amendments. Voters in six more are poised to vote on constitutional amendments in November, while similar proposals in two other states may also qualify. Marking the first anniversary of Spain's becoming one of only four nations where gay and lesbian couples have access to traditional marriage, some one-and-a-half million people turned out for the LGBT Pride parade in Madrid on July 1st. Duplicating the banners a few weeks earlier in Valencia, the theme of the Madrid march was also "For Diversity: All Families Matter," an apparent jab at last year's "Families Do Matter" campaign against same gender marriage by the country's rightwing Family Forum. About 40,000 people also celebrated Pride in Barcelona. Police said the marchers themselves numbered about 3,500. Two Spanish gay couples very publicly tied the knot this week in the Valencia town hall. Elsewhere in the city, Pope Benedict XVI was saying mass before more than a million people to conclude his two-day visit to predominantly Catholic Spain. During the service he once again condemned gays and lesbians and said limiting marriage to one man and one woman is "a great good for all humanity". Admitting that, "it may not please the Pope," the timing of the weddings was chosen specifically to criticize the Roman Catholic Church's stance on sexual morality, according to the activist group Lambda, and to promote the "diversity of the family." Meanwhile, Spain's first gay divorce battle is under way, according to a report in the El Mundo newspaper. One man seeks to keep the house and the dogs, and grant his husband pet visitation rights. The two men were not identified. But two gay Air Force privates based in the Spanish city of Seville plan to legally wed in September, taking the country's new same gender marriage law to the ranks of the military for what is believed to be the first time there. Their union may not be well received in the armed forces but the two men, both of whom are named Alberto, say they don't care. Their last names were not released. Spain's Defense Ministry acknowledged that it was aware of the wedding plans through news reports, but said only that it was a personal matter, and that the men have every right to wed under the marriage equality law that went into effect in the country on January 1st. The wedding of two Nova Scotia Mounties, held at a downtown hotel in Yarmouth on June 30th, marked Canada's first marriage of two male Mounties. Jason Tree and David Connors, wearing the Mounties' trademark scarlet tunics, recited their own vows during a private ceremony before a justice of the peace and about a hundred guests. And finally, opponents of Arizona's proposed constitutional ban on legal recognition of same gender couples sued this week to keep it off the November 7th ballot, charging that the measure violates the U.S. state's "single-subject rule" for voter initiatives. Georgia's Supreme Court rejected a similar challenge last week to an amendment passed by that state's voters in 2004. The plaintiffs in the Arizona lawsuit, however, are 5 heterosexual couples, who argue that some voters may want to ban marriage but not other forms of legal recognition for same gender couples. They're mostly senior citizens, who believe that the initiative is written so broadly that it would strip them of the domestic partner recognition they enjoy in cities such as Phoenix, Tucson, and Tempe, as well as in Pima County. Protect Marriage Arizona turned in almost 308,000 signatures last week to qualify the measure for the ballot, far more than the 184,000 valid signatures required. Elections officials are expected to finish the verification process in about two weeks. A court ruling on the legal challenge will have to be made within six weeks because Arizona requires a lawsuit to be decided before ballots are printed. One of the plaintiff pairs, 59-year-old Kaitlin Meadows and her partner, 68-year-old Albert Lannon, were the 10th couple to sign Tucson's domestic partner registry. According to a story in the "Tucson Citizen," they decided to do that after learning that Meadows could lose her Social Security benefits if the two were to get married. "We are a late-in-life, taxpaying couple who has played by the rules all our lives," she told the "Citizen," "but the rules have not protected us." Welcome to our world, Ms. Meadows.