"NewsWrap" for the week ending July 29, 2006 (As broadcast on "This Way Out" program #957, distributed 7-31-06) [Written by Greg Gordon, with thanks to Graham Underhill, Bill Kelley, and Rex Wockner] Reported this week by Christopher Gaal and Tanya Kane-Parry The Baltic nation of Slovenia has granted legal recognition to registered same gender partners, but with significant restrictions. The new law gives gay and lesbian couples access to each other's pensions and property, but inexplicably limits those at the official ceremonies to the couple and a local registry official. Slovenia's gay and lesbian organizations, while welcoming the move, criticized the law as "insufficient" because no friends or family can attend the ceremonies, and they may only be conducted in a state office. Lesbian and gay couples must register 30 days in advance, and provide documents proving they are sane, healthy and unmarried. In early July the Czech Republic became the first country in the region to legalize much less restrictive gay and lesbian civil partnerships. But Washington's Supreme Court this week dealt U.S. marriage equality advocates another setback. The state legislature passed its version of the Defense of Marriage Act in 1998, restricting marriage to one man and one woman. Two lawsuits were filed by a total of 19 gay and lesbian couples challenging the constitutionality of the law. Overturning lower court decisions in each of those cases, the Washington high court ruled 5 to 4 that only the legislature could change the state's marriage laws. In his concurring opinion, Justice James Johnson wrote that the challenge by marriage equality backers involved "a claim of raw judicial power to redefine public institutions such as marriage... This court does not possess that power - no court does." The majority opinion also echoed recent rulings by other state high courts that bearing and raising children is an important reason to keep marriage an exclusively heterosexual institution. But the main dissenting opinion, written by Justice Mary Fairhurst, criticized her colleagues for "ignoring the fact that denying same-sex couples the right to marry has no prospect of furthering any of those interests." Nor have any of the recent high court rulings citing the state's need to encourage heterosexual matrimony, most notably in New York and Georgia, acknowledged the existence of thousands of same gender couples and their children. The narrow 5 to 4 decision, issued 16 months after the Court heard oral arguments, generated pages of competing opinions. Because only 3 justices agreed with the specific rationale of the ruling, it's a "plurality" opinion given less weight than if a full majority had signed on. Two other justices agreed that the state's Defense of Marriage Act was constitutional, but issued separate opinions to explain their reasoning. Even the majority ruling acknowledged the discrimination faced by same gender couples and said that the legislature should address those inequities. Openly gay Washington state representative Jim Moeller vowed this week to do just that, saying he'll introduce a bill in the next legislative session to open marriage to same gender couples. The Democrat-controlled California legislature last year became the only U.S. state law-making body to pass a marriage equality bill, but Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed it. The next judicial walk down the matrimonial aisle appears to be in Maryland's highest court. A Baltimore circuit judge ruled in January that the state's ban on same gender marriage is unconstitutional. The Maryland Court of Appeals agreed this week to fast track to its next term a constitutional challenge to the law, originally filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and Equality Maryland on behalf of 9 same gender couples. Oral arguments before the Court of Appeals are expected to be heard in December. No one would predict when the Maryland high court might issue a ruling. Lambda Legal and the American Civil Liberties Union announced this week that they've filed papers asking the full federal 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to reconsider its 3 judge panel's decision upholding a particularly onerous Nebraska statute. The July 14th ruling said that the voter-approved state constitutional amendment banning any form of legal recognition for lesbian and gay couples does not violate the U.S. Constitution. There were no predictions as to if, when, or how the 8th Circuit would respond to the appeal. A challenge to the notion that marriage equality should be the priority issue for queer advocacy groups is being widely circulated and discussed across America. A statement titled "Beyond Same-Sex Marriage: A New Strategic Vision for All Our Families & Relationships" asserts that advocacy for other important issues affecting gays and lesbians has been overwhelmed by the time and dollars spent on marriage equality, and ignores many in the community for whom marriage is not a direct concern. Among the 250 original signatories are current and former leaders of the Na tional Gay and Lesbian Task Force and GLAAD -- the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation -- novelist Armistead Maupin, and heterosexual allies like scholar Cornel West, Ms. Magazine founder Gloria Steinem, and essayist Barbara Ehrenreich. The timing of its release, during the same week that the Task Force, GLAAD, and Freedom to Marry launched a 250-thousand-dollar nationwide "Marriage Matters" newspaper ad campaign, was coincidental, according to Joseph DeFilippis of Queers for Economic Justice and a co-author of the statement. He told reporters that resources spent on marriage "dwarf what's spent on other important issues, such as domestic partnership and universal health care." But Lambda Legal's Jon Davidson said he doubted that the circulating statement would create a serious divide in the LGBT community. "I think the press attention is definitely focused disproportionately on marriage," he said, "but most organizations and many members of our community are not." DeFilippis claimed that the number of signatories at beyondmarriage.org more than doubled in the first week it was posted, suggesting growing support for greater advocacy on a wider slate of LGBT issues. With the backing of the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, a decorated Army Sergeant and Arabic language specialist is speaking out about his discharge under the infamous "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" U.S. military policy. 30-year-old Bleu Copas told the "Associated Press" this week that he was "outed" earlier this year by several anonymous e-mails to his superiors in the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Copas says his honorable discharge papers, which mention his awards and citations, also give the reason for his dismissal, "outing" him to prospective employers before they’ve even had the chance to meet him. He plans to appeal to the Army Board for Correction of Military Records. More than 11,000 lesbian and gay service members have been dismissed under "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" since its inception in 1993. The federal General Accountability Office reported that nearly 800 of them have had critical skills, including 300 linguists. Fifty-five were proficient in Arabic, including Copas, a graduate of the Defense Language Institute. According to the Center for the Study of Sexual Minorities in the Military at the University of California, Santa Barbara, discharging and replacing those service members has cost the Pentagon nearly 369 million dollars. A federal judge this week dismissed a challenge to the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy brought by a veteran Air Force nurse who was forced out of her job because she's a lesbian. Air Force Reserve Major Margaret Witt of Spokane, Washington asked U.S. District Judge Ronald B. Leighton to reinstate her, citing the 2003 U.S. Supreme Court ruling striking down all state sodomy laws. Leighton ruled that the decision didn't affect the constitutionality of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." Witt is a 19-year Air Force veteran who'd been assigned to a medical e vacuation squadron working out of McChord Air Force Base near Tacoma. She was suspended without pay in late 2004 after the Air Force received an apparently anonymous tip that she had been in a long-term relationship with a civilian woman. Her official discharge is still pending. Doug Honig of the American Civil Liberties Union said they plan to appeal Witt's case to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. "Major Witt is much decorated and has saved people's lives," he told reporters. "The people she helped didn't care about her sexual orientation." It apparently requires other-than-U.S. citizenship and a knighthood to overcome the Pentagon's "Don’t Ask, Don't Tell" policy: British gay actor and outspoken activist Sir Ian McKellen has been made an officer in the Georgia National Guard by Republican Governor Sonny Perdue. Although Perdue supports the anti-queer military policy and has been an outspoken opponent of marriage equality, his staff was apparent ignorant of McKellen's sexual orientation. "I was in Atlanta doing press for 'The Da Vinci Code' and they wanted to honor me," Sir Ian told the "New York Daily News," boasting, "The governor made me a lieutenant colonel!" And finally -- unless you've been sequestered somewhere -- you probably know that a boy band heart-throb has said "Bye Bye Bye" to the closet in a big way. Lance Bass of the hit-making N Sync came out in a splashy cover story this week in People magazine. The singer said he's been reluctant to be more open about his sexual orientation because he feared it might affect the success of N Sync, which has been on hiatus since 2003, and that he felt responsible for the careers of his band mates as well as his own. Bass says he's in a "very stable" relationship with Reichen Lehmkuhl, a co-winner of the CBS-TV reality show "The Amazing Race" a few seasons back. "The thing is, I'm not ashamed — that's the one thing I want to say," he told the magazine. "I'm more liberated and happy than I've been my whole life."