"NewsWrap" for the week ending December 9, 2006 (As broadcast on "This Way Out" program #976, distributed 12-11-06) [Written by Greg Gordon, with thanks to Graham Underhill, and Rex Wockner with Bill Kelley] Reported this week by Rick Watts and Charls Hall [House of Commons sound: announcement of vote in English and French, "the motion is defeated," applause fades out under:] More than 3 years after some of the country's provincial courts set in motion federal legislation to end discrimination against same-gender couples, Canada's gays and lesbians can finally rest easy. The country's House of Commons voted 175-to-123 on December 7th to reject a proposal by the minority Conservative Party government to re-visit the contentious issue. The margin was greater than those on either side had expected, and larger than the 2005 vote in parliament that established marriage equality. What appears to be the final nail in the coffin for opponents left LGBT rights advocates celebrating, and anti-queer groups accusing the minority Conservative government of betrayal. "We made a promise to have a free vote on this issue," said Prime Minister Stephen Harper, referring to his successful election campaign, and "We kept that promise." Much to the displeasure of right-wing groups still fighting what they acknowledged was a losing battle, Harper called the vote "decisive," saying, "I don't see reopening this question in the future." Among those voting against the motion were five members of Harper's own cabinet. About 12,400 marriage licenses have been issued to same-gender couples in Canada since the province of Ontario became the first to legalize them in June 2003, according to Canadians for Equal Marriage. "With each passing month, more and more same-sex couples are getting married," said its National Coordinator Laurie Arron. In fact, gay and lesbian couples have been heading to the altar in Canada in unprecedented numbers, according to new statistics released this week. From the beginning of June through October there was a jump of 23 percent in the number of same-gender couples obtaining marriage licenses. In Ontario, where over 6,500 same-gender couples have now wed, there was a 17 percent increase, and Quebec enjoyed a 35 percent increase during the same five months. But the biggest jump was in the country's most conservative province, Alberta, where the numbers increased by 40 percent. Wedding fever has also swept the United Kingdom. The Office for National Statistics revealed this week that 15,672 civil partnerships have been contracted since December 2005, when they first became legal in the U.K., through September 2006. While not calling it marriage, the Civil Partnership Act gives same gender couples virtually the same rights as their heterosexually wed counterparts. 14,084 civil partnership ceremonies were held during the period in England, with London hosting about 25 percent of them. There were 942 in Scotland, 109 in Northern Ireland, and 537 in Wales. 'It was assumed there would be in the region of between 11,000 and 22,000 civil partnerships by the year 2010," a government spokesperson told reporters, "so we are already past the midway point of that estimation in just nine months of the [Civil Partnership] Act coming into force." Italy's Senate this week passed a motion calling on the government of Prime Minister Romano Prodi to offer legislation creating civil unions for gay and lesbian couples by the end of January. The motion cited "the growing debate within politics and public opinion concerning common law unions and the rights and duties stemming from them." The move came on the heels of a vote earlier in the week in the northern city of Padua to create a domestic partner registry for same-gender and unmarried heterosexual couples -- the first such action in any Italian municipality. The campaign platform of Prodi's leftist coalition last year included granting rights to same-gender couples. His diverse coalition ranges from Communists who favor full marriage equality to Catholic-affiliated politicians who oppose any rights for gay and lesbian partners. Prodi himself opposes marriage and prefers civil unions. His government has reportedly been working on a bill that would be similar to Britain's civil partnership law that grants all the rights of marriage but not the name -- but a draft bill has not yet been completed. Prodi's office issued a statement approving the January 31st deadline, however, saying the Senate vote "represent[s] a fundamental step forward." Pope Benedict XVI warned Prodi's government this week that the Vatican will use all of its power to thwart any move to legally recognize same-gender co uples. Speaking at yet another Vatican conference on marriage and the family, Benedict yet again condemned same-gender unions, insisting that a marriage must be a union between a man and a woman and must be open to procreation. South Australia's parliament caught up with the rest of that country's states and territories by passing a Domestic Partnership bill this week. The vote was an overwhelming 16-to-3. It will grant South Australia’s same-gender couples many of the same rights as heterosexually married couples. Queer activists are confident that Governor Marjorie Jackson-Nelson will sign the bill into law before the end of the year. South Australia’s lobby for the rights of same-gender couples, Let’s Get Equal, was relieved by the bill's passage after two previous attempts ended in failure, but said it was only the beginning of the journey toward full equality. "Of course, there are still areas of law where we aren’t equal," the group said on its Web site, "for example, with regard to adoption rights and reproductive rights. But it’s a start." A legislative committee in the U.S. state of New Jersey this week approved by a 4-to-2 vote a bill that would create civil unions giving same-gender couples rights equivalent to heterosexual marriage -- but refusing to call them that. An October state Supreme Court ruling ordered marriage equality for lesbian and gay couples, but left it to lawmakers to decide what to call such unions. According to a "Reuters" report, the New Jersey Assembly Judiciary Committee heard sometimes-emotional testimony from all sides during a four hour long hearing. Steve McIntyre said he's been with his partner for 20 years, and they want to be legally married. "He's not my roommate, he's not my partner, he's my husband," he told the panel. Steven Goldstein, the chair of Garden State Equality, said the civil unions bill offers nothing that New Jersey gay and lesbian couples don't already have under the state's domestic partner law. He said the legislation is not even as comprehensive as Vermont's civil unions law, and that "The 60 pages of paper used to print this bill is an assault on the trees killed... Even by the standards of a civil unions bill, it's still putrid." He accused lawmakers of trying to rush the bill through even as equality advocates were mounting a major campaign across the state to generate support for full marriage rights. A bill was also introduced in the New Jersey legislature this week to grant full marriage equality to gay and lesbian couples. Even though that measure appears to be going nowhere, its sponsor came out in the process. Democratic New Jersey Assemblyman Reed Gusciora, who becomes the first openly gay member of the New Jersey legislature, told a TV news show that, "I've just never made an issue of it. If someone asks me, I tell them. No one ever asked me publicly before." He believes that his constituents won't care that he's gay. "At least I hope so," he said. "New Jersey is a lot more tolerant than other states." But while a survey by the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute in Hamden, Connecticut reported this week that 60 percent of New Jersey voters support a law allowing civil unions, half are against calling them marriage. According to most reports, the civil unions bill is expected to be approved in both houses of the state legislature by the end of the year. And finally, the lesbian daughter of U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney is pregnant. Mary Cheney and her partner of 15 years, Heather Poe, are "ecstatic" about the baby, due in May or June, a source close to the couple told the "Washington Post". Details about the conception have not been disclosed. The couple moved from Colorado to Virginia a year ago to be closer to Cheney's family. In November, Virginia voters passed a state constitutional amendment banning same-gender marriages and civil unions. State law is unclear on whether Poe will have any parental rights there. A Vice Presidential spokesperson told reporters that Dick and Lynne Cheney "are looking forward with eager anticipation to the arrival of their sixth grandchild." But the news has outraged rightwing conservative groups, for whom the Vice President has generally been a poster boy. Carrie Gordon-Earll, a spokesperson for Focus on the Family, told reporters that, "Just because it’s possible to conceive a child outside the relationship of a married mother and father doesn’t mean it’s best for the child. Love cannot replace a mom or a dad." But Executive Director Jeff Lutes of Soulforce, an ecumenical LGBT advocacy group, said "We find it unconscionable that Focus on the Family has exploited [this] good news in order to once again ignore... the social science research on same-sex parent families." The American Association of Marriage and Family Therapy, American Psychological Association, and American Academy of Pediatrics have each issued statements in support of adoption rights and legal protections for same gender parents and their children. As far back as 2001, sociologists Judith Stacey and Timothy Biblarz published a comprehensive review of the research on lesbian and gay parenting in the "American Sociological Review." In an interview, Dr. Stacey concluded that "there is not a single, respectable social scientist conducting and publishing research in this area today who claims that gay and lesbian parents harm children." Stacey later asserted that children of same-gender parents may, in fact, have an advantage by some measures "because of selection factors. It's because these are wanted children," she said. "When you're looking at heterosexual parenting, you have a lot of accidental" pregnancies.