"NewsWrap" for the week ending June 10, 2006 (As broadcast on "This Way Out" program #950, distributed 6-12-06) [Written by Greg Gordon, with thanks to Graham Underhill and Rex Wockner] Reported this week by Christopher Gaal and Greg Gordon Government leaders on 3 continents were speaking out this week on the issue of marriage equality -- and none had anything good to say about it. In Australia, the government of Prime Minister John Howard announced that it would attempt to overturn the recently enacted civil unions law in the Australian Capital Territory, or A.C.T. But before the week was up the A.C.T. legislature shortened the timetable for same gender couples to take advantage of the new law by amending the Civil Unions Act to change from one month to 5 days the notice couples need to give before being civilly united. The first civil union could therefore be celebrated as early as June 15th. Australia's Attorney General Philip Ruddock this week said that his Government will use its constitutional power to overturn the law, since it has oversight over territorial legislation. The federal government's position is that "civil unions" giving same gender couples all the rights of marriage -- but just not calling them that -- violates the country's Marriage Act. The registrar-general's office for the A.C.T., which includes the capital city of Canberra, has warned couples that their civil unions may be voided. According to its Web site, "Anyone intending to enter into a civil union under the Civil Unions Act 2006 is advised that there is a risk attached to their decision given the current uncertainty with the legislation." Prime Minister John Howard denied his Government was homophobic during comments this week on national radio. "We are not anti-homosexual people or gay and lesbian people, it is not a question of discriminating against them; it is a question of preserving as an institution in our society marriage as having a special character," he said. Meanwhile -- though it has no serious chance of passage -- the U.S. Republican Party and its leaders trotted out the so-called Federal Marriage Amendment for another exercise in futility this week. Most commentators saw it as the GOP's attempt to feed political hay to its rightwing conservative base in an election year. A similar Congressional "debate" in 2004 was thought to push conservative voters in almost a dozen states to the polls to approve anti-marriage equality ballot measures. President George W. Bush used his weekly Saturday radio address and remarks before a friendly conservative crowd 2 days later to urge passage of the amendment, sounding familiar themes... [W:] "...This national question requires a national solution, and on an issue of such profound importance, that solution should come from the people, not the courts. An amendment to the Constitution is necessary because activist courts have left our nation with no other choice." Calling the President's remarks "an immoral attack on gay Americans," Matt Foreman of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force said that using the "activist courts and judges" catch phrase is "not only insulting to the foundation of our republic but profoundly ironic given that they come from a man who would not be president at all but for 'activist judges.'" Amending the U.S. Constitution requires a two-thirds vote in both houses of Congress and ratification by three-fourths of the states. A procedural Senate move for a formal tally got a 49 to 48 vote this week, but required 60 ayes, so there was no vote on the actual Amendment there. But the Republican leadership isn't finished romancing its rightwing base. They've announced that they'll push the amendment in the House of Representatives next month. Voters in Alabama, by a 4-to-1 margin this week, approved a state constitutional amendment banning legal recognition of same gender couples. Nineteen other U.S. states have approved similar measures. Canada's new Conservative leader Stephen Harper this week said his campaign promise to revisit the marriage equality issue in Parliament won't be realized for a few more months. The announcement "comes on the heels of many Conservative MPs saying they consider the matter settled," said a statement from Canadians For Marriage Equality, "and we think Mr. Harper should move on." The group says the vote could be held sooner, and rather quickly, but that Harper's delay is designed to give rightwing groups more time to lobby their MPs before a Parliamentary vote to reconsider the issue is held. Few pundits believe there's a realistic chance for federal marriage equality legislation to be repealed in Canada, and some charge that Harper is only following the lead of Australia's Howard and the U.S.'s Bush by pandering to conservative voters. The Vatican continued its now-frequent attacks on gays and lesbians this week, calling same gender marriage, abortion, and a host of other practices it sees as threats to the so-called "traditional family" "the eclipse of God". Its 60-page document, called "Family and Human Procreation," said the family was under attack around the world, even in traditionally Christian cultures, by what it called "radical currents" proposing new family models. It listed these threats as giving same gender couples legal recognition equal to married heterosexuals, lesbians the right to bear children through artificial insemination, and gays and lesbians the right to adopt children. The coalition of recently installed Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi has promised some form of legal recognition for same gender and unmarried heterosexual couples, but has stopped short of calling it marriage. Prodi reprimanded one of his ministers in late May for publicly discussing the matter, and 2 other ministers for talking about other Vatican-sensitive issues. "... There's a need to get our heads down and speak only when a decision has been made," he said. We've reached the peak of Pride season around the world, and gays and lesbians in overwhelmingly Roman Catholic Poland won the right to stage pride parades in late May when the country's Supreme Administrative Court upheld a ruling against Poznan's mayor, who had banned last year's parade. Queers and their supporters marched in that western Polish city anyway and were pelted with eggs and stones. 75 Pride marchers were arrested, but courts later refused to prosecute them. Defiant pride marchers in the southern city of Krakow faced similar egg-and-rock throwers earlier this year. Other Polish officials -- including President Lech Kaczynski when he was mayor of Warsaw -- also banned or attempted to ban pride parades. The Court ruling applied nationwide, so current Warsaw officials had no choice but to allow several thousand LGBT people and their supporters to march for Pride there on June 10th. Politicians and activists from several countries demonstrated international solidarity by taking part in the Equality Parade through the heart of the Polish capital. Unlike Pride events elsewhere in Europe in recent weeks the event was relatively peaceful, as some 2,000 police officers prevented about a hundred egg-throwing skinheads from directly confronting the marchers as they gathered in a counter-demonstration at the start of the parade route. Fifty-one protesters were arrested on June 3rd at the second annual Pride parade in Bucharest, Romania, after they threw bottles, rocks and eggs at the marchers. Police had to use teargas to restrain the opponents, and 10 people were reportedly injured in the melee. More than 1,000 protestors -- including nuns and priests carrying crosses -- confronted the 500 marchers. Other opponents threw eggs from balconies along the parade route. Reminiscent of the previous week's event in Moscow that had a similar but more injurious outcome, several activists from across Europe also marched in solidarity with local Romanian activists, who, carrying multi-colored flags and singing patriotic songs, demanded legal protections from discrimination and marriage equality. Gays and lesbians are under increasing attack in many parts of Eastern Europe. Last July hundreds of police officers had to protect a few dozen rights demonstrators from an angry mob in the Latvian capital, Riga, and the mayor of Chisinau, Moldova issued an outright ban on a Pride event in his city last month. Zsolt Semjén, the leader of Hungary's Christian Democratic People's Party, used homophobic rhetoric to attract votes in that country's recent elections. "If you want your son to have his first sexual experiences with a bearded, older man," he notoriously said, "you should vote for the Liberals." And the openly-gay Dutch ambassador to Estonia said this week that he was leaving his post because of the constant homophobic and racist harassment and threats his Black Cuban-born partner had been subjected to on the streets of Tallinn. But several hundred people staged the first-ever Pride parade in the Indian Ocean nation of Mauritius on May 20th. Reports said many onlookers were shocked by the demonstration in a busy shopping area. According to the Reuters news agency, drag queens led the parade wearing feather boas and high heels. The country's Attorney General Rama Valayden called the march "a new page in the history of Mauritius... the page of freedom." And finally, in the Northern California city of Los Altos, the downtown area was awash in rainbow-colored flags and balloons on June 4th in that city's controversial first-ever Pride Parade. An estimated 300 people walked the 8-block route, cheered on by a sparse but exuberant crowd of supporters lining the sidewalks and providing non-stop applause. The Los Altos Gay-Straight Alliance --or GSA -- organized the parade after the City Council voted in February to ban proclamations regarding sexual orientation, and went on record as being opposed to a Pride event. 16-year-old Los Altos GSA co-president Nicolette Bocalan said at the post-parade rally that "there is a silent youth here that is afraid to be anything but silent... This parade is as much for giving them hope as it is for celebrating our own pride."