"NewsWrap"
for the week ending February 3, 2007
(As broadcast on "This Way Out" program #984, distributed 2-5-07)
[Written by Greg Gordon, with thanks to Lucia Chappelle, Graham Underhill, 
and Rex Wockner with Bill Kelley]


Reported this week by Christopher Gaal and Charls Hall


  A lesbian couple celebrated Mexico's first same-gender civil union this 
week.  Karina Almaguer and Karla Lopez traveled to the city of Saltillo to 
register their "civil solidarity union" under new legislation passed in the state of 
Coahuila earlier this month.  That law made Coahuila -- a mining and ranching 
region bordering Texas -- the first of Mexico's 31 states to grant legal 
recognition to same-gender couples.  It allows couples from other states to 
register their unions -- the newlyweds are from the state of Tamaulipas -- and 
grants most of the benefits of heterosexual marriage, including property, social 
security and inheritance rights.
Luz Maria Rivera Berrueto, the State Registrar in Saltillo -- similar to a 
Justice of the Peace -- performed the ceremony, concluding with "By the powers 
invested in me by the State, I now declare you united in the name of the law.  
You may now hug each other."  The couple reportedly followed her directive and 
didn’t publicly kiss at that time.
National television showed the happy women smiling and holding glasses of 
champagne right after the ceremony, held at a local hotel, and reported the event 
as "an historical moment in Mexico’s history."
In November, Mexico City — which as a semi-independent capital zone  has some 
of the same powers as states — passed a similar measure, the first iin the 
nation's history.  That law doesn’t go into effect until mid-March.


  Meanwhile, a persecuted gay man from Mexico has won asylum in the United 
States.  Jorge Sota Vega, who lived in Tuxpan and Guadalajara before he fled to 
the U.S., said he was repeatedly beaten by police and others and threatened 
with death in his native country because he is gay.
Los Angeles immigration Judge John D. Taylor originally denied Vega’s asylum 
bid in 2004, concluding that the man could easily conceal his sexual 
orientation and therefore live safely in Mexico.  Vega, who now lives in New York, 
appealed to the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.  Those 
judges found that Vega's past persecution was reason enough to think he would be 
harmed in the future, and sent the case back to immigration court.  Taylor 
reversed himself this week after lawyers convinced him that Vega would be at risk 
if he were deported to Mexico.
Jon Davidson of Lambda Legal, Vega’s lead attorney in the case, told 
reporters that "Courts don't deny asylum to someone based on their political beliefs 
by saying, 'If you just didn't tell other people what you believed, you would 
be fine.'"  He said the new ruling "showed a change in attitude and an 
understanding that the same standard should apply for gay people who are seeking 
asylum."


  Israel’s Interior Ministry this week recorded the first same-gender 
marriage in that country -- three months after the nation’s highest court directed 
the government to register same-gender marriages legally contracted in other 
countries.  Jerusalem residents Binyamin and Avi Rose flew to Canada last June 
and were legally wed in Toronto before returning to Israel.  They were among 
several Canadian-wed same gender couples to sue for recognition in Israel’s high 
court.  That ruling, however, only directs the government to record the 
marriage in the Population Registry for the purpose of collecting statistics, and 
doesn’t give the Roses any rights of a married couple in Israel.  There are no 
civil marriages in the country, only religious unions regulated by rabbinical 
authorities.  Queer advocacy groups have been lobbying the Israeli government 
to create some form of civil unions for same-gender couples, joining with 
secularist Israelis who have been campaigning for heterosexual civil marriage for 
years.


  Canadians who marry their gay or lesbian partners abroad will now be able 
to sponsor their spouses' immigration to Canada.  Government Minister Diane 
Finley informed the Canadian House of Commons Standing Committee of Citizenship 
and Immigration this week that her department’s interim policy, which didn’t 
recognize legal same-gender marriages performed in The Netherlands, Belgium, 
Spain, South Africa, and Massachusetts for immigration purposes, has been 
rescinded.  Canada itself granted marriage equality to gay and lesbian couples in 
2005.


  The Canadian Government this week also criticized the "pattern of 
discrimination" against gays and lesbians at the United Nations after a UN committee 
denied "observer status" to yet another LGBT organization.  Predominantly Muslim 
countries led opposition to this week’s bid by Canada’s Coalition Gaie et 
Lesbienne du Quebec to be recognized as an accredited non-governmental 
organization.  The committee is an arm of the 54-member Economic and Social Council, an 
agency responsible for promoting development and cultural issues at the world 
body.  Only a handful of LGBT organizations have ever been granted such 
status by that committee, most notably the European branch of ILGA – the 
International Lesbian and Gay Association ­ late last year.
Delegates from Egypt, Guinea, Pakistan, Qatar, Sudan, Burundi, China, and 
Russia voted against the Canadian group, while Britain, Colombia, Israel, Peru, 
Romania and the United States voted in favor.  Angola, India and Turkey 
abstained.
Yvan Lapointe, the Quebec group’s Executive Director, offered reporters some 
insight into the process when she described a comment by one member of the UN 
committee as they were interviewing her about the application.  She said that, 
"The delegate from Egypt told me they don’t have a gay problem in his 
country, because there are no gays there," 


  In the U.S., the Michigan state Court of Appeals ruled this week that 
public universities and state and local governments that provide health insurance 
to the partners of lesbigay employees are violating the state constitution.
A three-judge panel cited the constitutional amendment passed by Michigan 
voters in November 2004 defining only the union of one man and one woman as a 
marriage "or similar union for any purpose."  Those last six words were 
emphasized in the court’s unanimous ruling that said, in part, "The marriage 
amendment's plain language prohibits public employers from recognizing same-sex unions 
for any purpose."
Several gays and lesbians who work at state universities and agencies and for 
the city of Kalamazoo had challenged the state Attorney General’s opinion 
that benefits for their domestic partners were disallowed under the amendment.  
Jay Kaplan, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan, 
said they’ll appeal to the state Supreme Court. "It's a misguided analysis, and 
they produced a heartless result," he said of the decision.  "It was never the 
voters' intention in 2004 to take away health insurance benefits from families 
and children."


  And if the ruling Liberal Party Government of Prime Minister John Howard 
has its way, children in other countries who are adopted by Australian 
same-gender couples won’t have two legal parents when they enter that country.
The government distributes a list of all the legislation it intends to 
introduce before the start of a new session of the Australian Senate.  Opposition 
Senator Andrew Bartlett used his personal blog this week to criticize one of 
those proposals.  The Government’s legislative agenda, says Bartlett, includes a 
bill that would "[A]mend the Family Law Act 1975 to indicate that adoptions by 
same sex couples of children from overseas under either bilateral or 
multilateral arrangements will not be recognised in Australia."
Bartlett, leader of the Australian Democrats, wrote that "As soon as the 
family walks through Australian customs, the child will cease to have two legal 
parents, and one of the parents will cease to have any legal rights or re
sponsibilities for their child… To use children and their relationshhip with their 
adopted parents as political pawns in an election year is setting a new low."  In 
2004, the last election year, Howard’s Liberal Party government pushed 
through a law defining legal marriage as only between a man and a woman.
Queer advocates have also expressed concerns about the Government's 
intentions, but Family Council of Victoria Secretary Bill Muehlenberg told reporters 
that the legislation would discourage same-gender couples from adopting foreign 
children, allowing those children to have a mother and father ­ assuuming, of 
course, that heterosexual couples could be found who want to adopt each of them.


  And finally, U.S. Vice Presidential daughter Mary Cheney said this week 
that the decision to become pregnant and raise a child with her female partner 
had nothing to do with politics.  "This is a baby," Cheney said at a Barnard 
College forum sponsored by "Glamour" magazine.  "This is a blessing from God.  It 
is not a political statement.  It is not a prop to be used in a debate by 
people on either side of an issue.  It is my child."
The 37-year-old Cheney announced in December that she and her partner of 15 
years, Heather Poe, were starting a family.  The baby is due in a few months 
and will be Vice President Dick Cheney's sixth grandchild.
The elder Cheney became testy last week during a "CNN" interview when host 
Wolf Blitzer asked what he thought of conservatives -- specifically James 
Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family ­- who’ve been criticcal of his daughter 
Mary's pregnancy.  In refusing to answer, the Vice President told Blitzer that the 
question was "over the line."  Mary told reporters that she agreed, and that 
Blitzer was simply "trying to get a rise out of my father."
She was asked if she had anything to say to Dobson, who’s claimed that 
children should be raised only by heterosexual married couples.
"Every piece of remotely responsible research that has been done in the last 
20 years on this issue has shown there is no difference between children who 
are raised by same-sex parents and children who are raised by opposite-sex 
parents," she said.  "What matters is that children are being raised in a stable, 
loving environment."  She added that Dobson is "not someone whose endorsement 
I have ever drastically sought."