Date: Mon, 9 Nov 1998 10:57:22 -1000 From: Mia H H Lam Subject: Progress Around The Globe (fwd) ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Mon, 9 Nov 1998 10:16:45 -1000 From: Tom Ramsey Subject: Progress Around The Globe Some Of The Progress Elsewhere Just to cheer you all up a bit, there IS progress elsewhere on this globe of ours. The Parliament of France is debating domestic partnerships this week. The Green Party of Germany is part of the new governing coalition; part of the bargain the Green's made to be part of the government is that Germany will also have some kind of domestic partnerships. And now there is this news from Spain, lifted from Rex Wockner's international news service: --> CATALAN PARTNERSHIPS BEGIN The new registered-partnership law in Spain's Catalonia region took effect Oct. 23. It grants cohabiting gay and straight couples many of the rights of matrimony but withholds adoption rights for gays. Spousal rights are included in the areas of inheritance, alimony, next of kin, apartment leases and work leave. Rights that are a matter of national rather than regional law are not included -- in areas such as social security, taxation and immigration. Couples must file a notarized document attesting to the nature of their relationship to access the new rights. "We know that this law cannot be the final result of our fight for a full legal recognition of same-sex couples, but it is an important step for the Catalan gay-lesbian movement," Barcelona's Coordinadora Gai-Lesbiana said. Countries with laws that grant same-sex couples nearly every right of matrimony include Denmark (and Greenland), Hungary, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. The Netherlands grants registered gay couples all spousal rights. Source: Rex Wockner's weekly "International News" is archived at http://www.qrd.org/qrd/www/world/wockner.html, which also archives Wockner's "Quote Unquote" column and some of his longer gay-press articles. ---> NEW: To do a keyword search of Wockner's archives, go to www.dejanews.com, scroll to the bottom of the screen and click on 'power search,' enter keywords in the search window (for example: Wockner gay Ghana), scroll down and set the dates to search from Jan 1 1995 to today, then click on 'find.' Archives of Microsoft Sidewalk's "The Wockner List" are at http://sandiego.sidewalk.com/wockner A profile of Wockner is at http://www.wired.com/news/news/culture/story/14229.html Please note: * World Wide Web and e-mail addresses never end with dots. Such a 'dot' is the period at the end of a news-story sentence. * Italics is shown like _this_. * The international telephone access code 011 is for dialing from the USA and Canada. Elsewhere, replace 011 with your own international access prefix.