"NewsWrap" for the week ending June 23, 2007 (As broadcast on "This Way Out" program #1,004, distributed 6-25-07) [Written by Greg Gordon, with thanks to Graham Underhill, and Rex Wockner with Bill Kelley] Reported this week by Rick Watts and Christopher Gaal A crowd variously estimated at from twenty-five-hundred to five thousand people marched with Pride in downtown Jerusalem on June 21st. About eight thousand police officers provided heavy security, and several ambulances and some 200 paramedics were also on hand. The city’s ultra-Orthodox Jewish sects have violently protested, and Muslim and Christian leaders have also denounced the notion of a queer Pride parade in the Holy City. But Dana Olmert, the openly lesbian daughter of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, told reporters that "Questioning the right to hold Gay Pride in Jerusalem is the equivalent to asking 'why give women the right to vote?’" Many Pride marchers wore rainbow skullcaps or waved rainbow flags, and some carried posters of South African freedom fighter Nelson Mandela. They cheered and sang as they paraded from Independence Park a few hundred yards along a street that passes in front of the historic King David Hotel to Liberty Bell Park. City officials forced the cancellation of a post-parade rally, citing a slow-down strike by firefighters, which meant a legally required fire truck was not available to safeguard it. A 32-year-old ultra-Orthodox man carrying what police called "a homemade explosive device" was arrested before the parade began. According to officials, 19 anti-queer protesters were arrested trying to approach the march, but there were no violent confrontations. Rightwing opponents filed a last-minute appeal to Israel’s Supreme Court to ban the march, but the justices ruled the night before that it could go on. The relatively peaceful late-afternoon Pride march was a welcome change from previous years. An ultra-Orthodox man stabbed three Jerusalem marchers in 2005, for which he’s serving a 12-year prison term. Last year’s street parade was canceled because of safety concerns, forcing Pride activists to gather at a heavily guarded enclosed sports stadium on the edge of the city. At least 24 officers were injured and 130 protestors were arrested in the days before this year’s parade as Jerusalem police battled anti-queer demonstrators. As the Pride march proceeded, dozens of ultra-Orthodox protesters held their own demonstration in another area of the city, bringing traffic to a standstill at the main entrance to Jerusalem. As in earlier actions, trash bins were set on fire, and smoke and the stench of burning garbage filled the air. Jerry Levinson, a Board member of Pride organizers Jerusalem Open House, told reporters that about 60,000 LGBT people live in metropolitan Jerusalem. "Perhaps we should thank the ultra-Orthodox community for giving us what we want," he said, "which is visibility that will lead to a kind of acceptance of our place in this city." In the equally ancient and religion-dominated city of Rome, LGBT people and their allies peacefully took to the streets on June 16th to dance, party, and demand their rights. Ten of thousands of people, among them sympathetic lawmakers, marched from Saint Paul's Gate to the Basilica of St. John Lateran, the official seat of the Pope as bishop of Rome, and the site of a large Church-sanctioned anti-queer "family" rally last month. Many Pride marchers carried rainbow flags and banners condemning the Pope’s outspoken opposition to queer unions. One banner read "More Freedom, Less Vatican," while another read "Love Equals Family." In February the nine-party coalition government of Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi agreed to introduce legislation that would grant legal recognition to gay and lesbian and unmarried heterosexual couples. Registered couples would gain hospital visitation, property, and inheritance rights. Queer campaigners complain that the proposed "civil pacts of solidarity" are a watered down version of what Prodi had promised in last year's election. But Catholic MPs, echoing Pope Benedict XVI and many of his bishops, have condemned them as a form of "pseudo marriage" that will undermine traditional family life. The bill has yet to be considered in Parliament. The country is sharply divided over whether same-gender couples should be legally recognized. A recent poll found 51% opposed and 47% in favor. Several media outlets last week ­ including this one - reported paassage in the Colombian legislature, with President Alvaro Uribe’s support, of an all-but-signed bill granting limited rights to same-gender couples. But it’s now become almost signed. The measure passed in both legislative chambers, and in the House of Representatives after a joint committee reconciled the different language in each version of the bill. Routine approval in the Senate was expected, but a bloc of conservative members who’d initially supported the bill voted against it, sending it to defeat. The reversal came after Colombia’s powerful Roman Catholic Church warned supportive lawmakers that they were violating Vatican policy and could be denied the sacraments. The measure would have granted lesbigay couples of legal age who’ve lived together for more than two years the same health insurance, social security and inheritance rights as heterosexual common-law married couples, and would have made Colombia the first Latin American nation to extend such rights. The bill was the fifth attempt since 1999 to legally recognize same-gender couples in the South American country. Its proponents have vowed to re-introduce a similar measure in the next session of Congress. A motion in the Australian Senate to grant access to fertility treatment and adoption rights to same-gender couples was defeated by both the left and right this week. The opposition Labour Party voted with conservative Prime Minister John Howard’s Liberal Party government to reject the measure, proposed by Green Senator Kerry Nettle, by a lopsided vote of 51 to eight. The defeat came during the same week that the country’s Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission issued a report saying that Australia’s more than 20,000 same-gender couples face systematic discrimination on a daily basis. They’re denied the basic financial entitlements, tax concessions and superannuation benefits available to heterosexual couples. And, the report said, "This is just a small sample of the discrimination caused by the many federal financial and work-related laws which exclude same-sex couples." It identified fifty-eight pieces of legislation that need to be amended to eliminate such bias. But legal recognition of queer couples now has majority support in Australia, according to new research findings also released this week. The Galaxy poll, commissioned by the progressive political movement GetUp!, found that about three in four people want gay and lesbian couples to have at least the same legal rights as de facto heterosexual partners. Some 57 per cent say that same-gender couples should be given full marriage equality, with 37 per cent opposed. The Human Rights Commission report and the new poll results will put addi tional pressure on the Federal Government to extend at least some rights to lesbigay couples. GetUp! Executive Director Brett Solomon asked "Why is it that when Australians favour equal rights for same-sex couples by more than a three-to-one margin, neither major party will give it to them?" The Democrat-controlled New York Assembly passed a bill opening marriage to same-gender couples this week, but the state's top Republican said he wouldn’t allow it to come to a vote in the Senate. In April, New York Democrat Eliot Spitzer became the first governor in the U.S. to introduce marriage equality legislation. It was shepherded through the Assembly by Daniel O'Donnell, the openly gay brother of lesbian celebrity Rosie O'Donnell. When the voting ended, openly gay Staten Island Democrat Matthew Titone, with cell phone in hand, told the Assembly, "I have my partner here on the phone, and he just asked me to marry him." To a round of applause, "My answer, Madam Speaker, is yes," he said. But with the close of the current legislative session just days away, Majority Leader Joseph L. Bruno of the Republican-controlled Senate declared the bill "dead on arrival." O'Donnell acknowledged during the Assembly debate that some members would have preferred a bill granting civil unions, similar to those in neighboring New Jersey. But the Manhattan Democrat said civil unions were no substitute for full marriage, telling fellow lawmakers that "It will not provide equality for people like me." And finally, as if to underscore that point, a commission created when New Jersey legalized civil unions has been told that the law is a failure. More than a thousand lesbigay couples have applied for civil union licenses since the law took effect on February 19th. Last October the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled that same-gender couples must be given all the rights of marriage, but left it up to the state legislature to decide whether to call them marriages or civil unions. The legislature chose civil unions, but the bill also mandated the establishment of the Civil Unions Review Commission to report every six months on whether the law was meeting the requirements of the court ruling. Longtime activist Steven Goldstein of Garden State Equality was elected vice-chair of the commission. He told the "365gay.com" Web site that his organization has had nearly 150 complaints of companies not abiding by the law, and that it’s not being recognized by a growing number of companies - all with federally regulated benefit plans. The Clinton-era so-called "Defense of Marriage Act" allows such insurers to reject same-gender couples. Goldstein said that nearly one in eight couples who’ve signed up for civil unions has been denied company benefits. Garden State Equality says that the civil unions law should be amended to be called marriage - something Goldstein said would force businesses to comply. A number of state lawmakers, including the Speaker of the Assembly, Democrat Joseph J. Roberts, Jr., appear to share Goldstein's concerns. It’s not clear when the commission will deliver its report to the legislature, but it’s generally expected to call for full marriage equality in New Jersey. "Stay tuned."


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