"NewsWrap"
for the week ending September 1, 2007
(As broadcast on "This Way Out" program #1,014, distributed 9-3-07)
[Written by Greg Gordon, with thanks to Graham Underhill, and Rex Wockner
with Bill Kelley]
Reported this week by Rick Watts and Jon Beaupré
A Superior Court judge in Polk County, Iowa ruled this week that the
state's Defense of Marriage Act, approved by the legislature and governor in 1998,
is unconstitutional. In one of the strongest arguments yet for marriage
equality in the U.S., Judge Robert Hanson said in his August 30th decision that:
"This court has yet to hear any convincing argument as to how excluding same-sex
couples from getting married promotes responsible reproduction in general, or
by different-sex couples in particular. So far as this court can tell (the
law) operates only to harm same-sex couples and their children." He ordered
that the state’s marriage laws "must be read and applied in a gender neutral
manner so as to permit same-sex couples to enter into a civil marriage ..."
The original lawsuit was filed by six same-gender couples in December 2005
after they were denied marriage licenses by clerks who cited Iowa's Defense of
Marriage Act. They were represented by queer advocacy group Lambda Legal and
Des Moines lawyer Dennis Johnson, who called the ruling "a moral victory for
equal rights."
County Attorney John Sarcone promised a quick appeal to the Iowa Supreme
Court, and asked Hanson to stay his ruling until that appeal was resolved. The
judge complied the next day, but not before two men became the state’s first
same-gender couple to legally marry. The marriage license approval process
normally takes three business days, but Sean Fritz and Tim McQuillan took advantage
of a loophole that allows couples to skip the waiting period if they pay a
five dollar fee and get a judge to sign a waiver. On August 31st, the Reverend
Mark Stringer declared the two men legally married in a wedding ceremony on
the Unitarian minister's front lawn in Des Moines.
But "I can't believe this is happening in Iowa," said state Republican House
Minority Leader Christopher Rants. He said the ruling demonstrates the need
for a constitutional amendment in his state to ban same-gender marriage, and
that "I guarantee you there will be a vote on this issue come January," when
the Legislature reconvenes.
The Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law released a new research study
this week showing that 19% of the 5,800 same-gender couples in Iowa are raising
more than 1,400 children. According to the study, same-gender couples with
children have fewer economic resources than their heterosexual, married
counterparts. Williams Institute Senior Research Fellow Gary Gates said that "These
couples... would no doubt benefit from the protections and recognition that
marriage provides."
Maine’s highest judicial body, the Law Court, ruled this week that a
lesbian couple should be allowed to jointly adopt two developmentally disabled
siblings currently in foster care. Under existing Maine law, either attorney Ann
Courtney or family counselor Marilyn Kirby could have adopted the children as a
single parent, but the couple decided they wanted to adopt them jointly, and
appealed a lower court ruling that prevented them from doing so.
In this week’s ruling, the Law Court said that: "A joint adoption assures
that in the event of either adoptive parent’s death, the children’s continued
relationship with the surviving parent is fixed and certain." The joint
adoption, the court added, "also enables the children to be eligible for a variety of
public and private benefits... [and] most importantly… the love, nurrturing,
and support of not one, but two parents."
Maine Attorney General Steven Rowe filed a friend of the court brief saying
that the state should protect the best interest of each adoptive child.
Several professional organizations, including the American Psychological Association
and the Child Welfare League of America, also supported the couple.
The unanimous ruling will allow other co-parent adoptions by same-gender
couples in the state. Maine currently has 2,286 children in foster care,
according to the state’s Department of Health and Human Services, and at least 530 of
those children are seeking adoption. Co-adoptions are expressly permitted in
a dozen other U.S. states.
In other news from around the world, gay journalist Rex Wockner is
reporting that the 18 men arrested in Bauchi, Nigeria August 5th on charges of
vagrancy, cross-dressing and practicing sodomy as a profession won’t face the death
penalty, contrary to most media reports. The men, who were detained at what
authorities described as a gay wedding party at the Benko Hotel, were charged
under Section 372, Subsection 2(e) of the Bauchi State Shariah Penal Code, which
allows for punishment of one year in prison and 30 lashes. At an August 21st
hearing in the Tunda Al Khali Area Court, Judge Tanimu Abubakar determined
that the men should have been charged only under the section's vagrancy and
cross-dressing provisions. Prosecution of the case was turned over to the Bauchi
State Ministry of Justice, instead of the police. The next hearing is
September 13th.
The judge released at least five of the men on bail and returned the others
to jail. An angry mob of Muslims threw rocks at them as they left the court
building. Police fired tear gas to disperse the mob, which also tried to set
the courthouse on fire. Another mob attempted to break into the prison this
week and lynch the men still in jail. One prison official was injured as guards
repelled the angry crowd.
Activist Joseph Akoro of the Nigerian queer group The Independent Project has
told the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission that the men
actually were not dressed as women when they were arrested, and that "This
leads us to believe that the charges have been drummed up to incite hatred against
gay people."
The head of Nigeria's Anglican Church, Archbishop Peter Akinola, is the
leading anti-queer voice in the 77-million-member global Anglican Communion. There
are more Anglicans in Nigeria -- 15 million -- than in any other nation
except the United Kingdom, which has 26 million.
Adding fuel to the smoldering Anglican fires over lesbigay issues, some
regions of the Church also oppose women bishops. An openly lesbian priest in the
Communion’s U.S. wing, the Episcopal Church, is among three women and five
nominees overall to become the new Bishop of the Chicago diocese. Reverend
Tracey Lind was named as a finalist this week to replace William Persell, who
plans to resign after his successor is installed. It’s also the first slate of
candidates in the diocese to include women. Lind would become the second
Episcopal bishop to live with a same-gender partner, following New Hampshire Bishop
V. Gene Robinson. His consecration in 2003 was the catalyst for the debate
over queer inclusion currently raging within the Anglican Communion.
Episcopal bishops will meet with the Church’s spiritual leader Archbishop of
Canterbury Rowan Williams in New Orleans this month to discuss demands that
they not elevate any other openly queer bishop until the Communion resolves the
issue if that’s even possible. If the bishops don't complly by September
30th, international leaders have warned that their relationship with the
Episcopal wing will remain "damaged at best." Williams has no direct authority to
force a resolution because each Anglican province is self-governing.
Schism could be a financial disaster for the Anglican Church, because the
small but wealthy Episcopalians, who number about 2.4 million, provide a
significant chunk of the worldwide Communion’s budget.
Meanwhile, two former Epsicopal priests were consecrated this week as
Anglican bishops in Kenya, becoming the latest in a string of conservative
ministers who are defecting to African churches in the dispute over queer clergy.
West Indies Archbishop Drexel Gomez was one of 10 Anglican leaders who attended
the ceremony for Bill Atwood of Texas and William Murdoch of Massachusetts in
Nairobi's All Saints Cathedral. Echoing last week’s statement by Nigerian
Archbishop Peter Akinola, Gomez told reporters that "The gospel... must take
precedence over culture... Homosexual practice violates the order of life given by
God in Holy Scripture."
According to Kenyan Archbishop Benjamin Nzimbi, 30 U.S. congregations have
asked to become part of African dioceses since New Hampshire’s Robinson was
consecrated. He said six other U.S. priests have been consecrated as bishops in
the Rwandan church, one has been consecrated in Nigeria, and another will be
consecrated in Uganda this week.
Atwood and Murdoch will return home to minister to their congregations with
Nzimbi as their spiritual adviser. Because they’re no longer affiliated with
the Episcopal Church, the men will have to find new church buildings and
funding in the United States. Several U.S. congregations whose priests have
switched to a foreign diocese are mired in lawsuits over ownership of church property.
But finally, legally-recognized same-gender unions appear to have existed
600 years ago in late medieval France, according to Allan Tulchin, an assistant
professor of history at Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania, writing in
the September issue of the "Journal of Modern History".
He says that affrerement, or "brotherment," originated with a certain type of
legal contract that provided a marriage-like foundation for biological
brothers who inherited the family home on an equal basis from their parents and
continued to live together. But in cases where the men were single, unrelated
men, the contracts provide "considerable evidence that the [men] were using
affrerements to formalize same-sex loving relationships," says Tulchin, who studied
documents and gravestones of the affreres to arrive at his conclusions.
Before a notary and witnesses, the "brothers" pledged to live together sharing
"one bread, one wine and one purse."
"I suspect that some of these relationships were sexual, while others may not
have been," writes Tulchin. "It is impossible to prove either way, and
probably also somewhat irrelevant to understanding their way of thinking... They
loved each other, and the community accepted that."
==== Craig sound story ====
(written by Greg Gordon and reported by Rick Watts & Jon Beaupré)
The U.S. Republican Party is going through some hard times. In recent weeks
there’ve been reports that conservative U.S. Senator from Louisiana David
Vitter's telephone number was listed in the records of an infamous Washington,
D.C. madam. Rightwing Republican U.S. Senator Ted Stevens' home in Alaska was
raided by federal agents as part of a corruption investigation. Florida state
Representative Bob Allen is embroiled in his own men’s room sex scandal. And
now Idaho’s senior U.S. Senator, 3-term Republican Larry Craig, has resigned
following a week-long furor that grew out of his arrest and guilty plea arising
from a police undercover sting operation in a Minneapolis airport men's room.
As the 62-year-old Craig told an Idaho press conference on September 1st...
Craig: "I have little control over what people choose to believe, but clearly
my name is important to me, and my family is so very important, also. Having
said that, to pursue my legal options, as I continue to serve Idaho, would be
an unwanted and unfair distraction of my job, and for my Senate colleagues...
therefore it is with sadness and deep regret that I announce that it is my
intent to resign from the Senate effective September 30th."
Idaho’s Republican Governor C.L. "Butch" Otter has reportedly already settled
on a successor - Lieutenant Governor Jim Risch, who’ll fill Craig’s seat
until next year, and then presumably run for a full term in what was expected to
be an easy re-election bid for Craig.
Craig pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of disorderly conduct, but he was
originally charged with soliciting sex from an undercover police officer. Police
Sergeant Dave Karsnia said that soon after he’d set up his position in the
airport restroom, Craig entered and sat in the stall next to him. Craig touched
his right foot to the left foot of the officer, brushed his hand beneath the
partition into the officer’s stall, and engaged in other conduct, according to
Karsnia, "often used by persons communicating a desire to engage in sexual
conduct."
In his first press conference earlier in the week following the revelation of
his arrest and guilty plea, Craig began with an odd turn of phrase:
Craig: "Thank you all very much, uh, for coming out today."
Craig said he’d done nothing wrong, that he had pleaded guilty to the lesser
charge of disorderly conduct to be finished with the matter but subsequently
regretted it, and apologized to his wife, who was at his side, his family, and
everyone in Idaho for the controversy. He found it necessary to deny being
gay more than once during that 4-and-a-half minute press conference:
Craig: "Let me be clear. I am not gay. I never have been gay."
And:
Craig: "I wasn’t eager to share this failure, but I should have anyway,
because I am not gay."
Craig refused to take questions, but that didn’t stop one reporter from
trying...
Craig: "...Thank you very much."
Reporter: "Senator, what happened in Minneapolis? And what if you were
gay... would you come out of the closet?"
Openly gay U.S. Congressman Barney Frank of Massachusetts, a Democrat, told
the "Associated Press" that he had hoped Craig wouldn’t resign. "It’s one
thing to say that someone can’t be trusted to vote without being corrupt," said
Frank, "it’s another to say that he can’t be trusted to go to the bathroom by
himself."
Meanwhile, during interrogation following his arrest at a Titusville, Florida
public park in July for soliciting sex from an undercover policeman, Florida
state Representative Bob Allen said that he’d been intimidated by the officer,
whom he described as a "stocky black guy," and that he worried that he "might
become a statistic." The oddly racist explanation drew public outrage, and
thanks to a judge’s ruling this week, it won’t be repeated at Allen's
September 19th trial.
Both Allen and Craig have terrible voting records on LGBT issues. Unlike
Craig, Allen is fighting his arrest in court -- but they’ve both denied being gay
in their public statements. Few seem to be discussing a bisexual possibility
in one or both cases. Nor have we seen much community discussion in the
context of these arrests about sex in public places -- probably most offensive to
heterosexuals, but to many LGBT people, also. Defenders say that for deeply
closeted gay and bisexual men, however, it may be their only outlet, and a
first step in a hoped-for coming out process. Gay journalist Rex Wockner,
reflecting on his college days in his "Wockner Wire" column this week, wrote that, "I
met my boyfriend of those years in the T-room in the southeast corner of the
basement of the [University of Illinois] student union. We actually never had
sex there; it's just where we met, given the limited options for meeting
other gay guys that existed in 1985 in Champaign-Urbana." "I couldn't care less
if Larry Craig comes out of the closet," he wrote. "But I will not let him
tell me he wasn't cruising. He could teach a Cruising 101 course."
And in considering their proclamations of innocence, you’d have to believe
that neither Allen nor Craig did anything to get a police officer’s attention.
Craig has claimed "entrapment," a term that itself begs another question.
Doesn’t there have to be an expressed desire of some sort on the part of the man
getting arrested for "entrapment" to even occur?
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