"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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