05.31.07
Posted in Advocate Articles, Gay Rights at 1:07 pm by pikapp44
Gay couples in New Hampshire will be able to join in civil unions starting next year under a bill Gov. John Lynch signed into law in Concord Thursday.
”We in New Hampshire have had a long and proud tradition taking the lead and opposing discrimination,” Lynch said. ”Today that tradition continues.”
Couples who enter civil unions will have the same rights, responsibilities and obligations as married couples. Same-sex unions from other states also would be recognized if they were legal in the state where they were performed.
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05.30.07
Posted in Advocate Articles at 4:56 pm by pikapp44
Rosie O’Donnell says she will likely never speak to Elisabeth Hasselbeck again after an on-air tiff last week with the cohost that led to O’Donnell’s early departure from The View.
The former host of the ABC daytime chatfest says in a video blog posted on her Web site that she has never tried harder to be friends with someone but that she doesn’t think she succeeded with Hasselbeck.
”I haven’t spoken to her, and I probably won’t, and I think it’s just as well,” she said. ”I wrote her an e-mail, and she wrote me back, and there you have it.”
The fight ended a colorful eight-month tenure for O’Donnell that lifted the show’s ratings but no doubt caused heartburn for show creator Barbara Walters. O’Donnell feuded with Donald Trump and frequently had snippy exchanges with the more conservative Hasselbeck.
On Friday, ABC said O’Donnell asked for, and received, an early exit from her contract. O’Donnell said last month she would be leaving because she could not agree to a new contract with ABC executives. In the video blog, she said she never really fit in.
”I was really just like a foster kid for a year,” she said. ”I came, you know, we considered adoption, but I didn’t really fit into the family, and now it’s time for the foster kid to go back home.”
O’Donnell fessed up that chief writer Janette Barber drew a mustache on a photo of Hasselbeck at the show’s studio before they left. ”It was a joke on the way out,” she said.
Calls to ABC and Walters were not immediately returned Monday.
The argument with Hasselbeck began Wednesday over O’Donnell’s statement last week about the war: ”655,000 Iraqi civilians have died. Who are the terrorists?”
Talk show critics accused O’Donnell of calling U.S. troops terrorists. O’Donnell called Hasselbeck ”cowardly” for not saying anything in response to the critics, which set off their lengthy argument.
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05.27.07
Posted in Gay Rights at 10:02 am by pikapp44
A MELBOURNE pub catering for gay men has won the right to refuse entry to heterosexuals in a landmark ruling at the state planning tribunal.
The owners of Collingwood’s Peel Hotel applied to ban straight men and women to try to prevent “sexually based insults and violence” towards its gay patrons.
The Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal last week granted the pub an exemption to the Equal Opportunity Act, effectively prohibiting entry to non-homosexuals.
VCAT deputy president Cate McKenzie said if heterosexual men and women came into the venue in large groups, their number might be enough to swamp the gay male patrons.
“This would undermine or destroy the atmosphere which the company wishes to create,” Ms McKenzie said in her findings.
“Sometimes heterosexual groups and lesbian groups insult and deride and are even physically violent towards the gay male patrons.”
Some women even booked hens’ nights at the venue using the gay patrons as entertainment, Ms McKenzie said.
“To regard the gay male patrons of the venue as providing an entertainment or spectacle to be stared at, as one would at an animal at a zoo, devalues and dehumanises them,” she said.
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05.24.07
Posted in Gay Rights at 8:21 am by pikapp44
One soldier called “aggressive” review of computer logs by the Defense Department one day last December, three additional Arab linguists who are gay have been discharged from the Army under the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy.
The discharges have angered lawmakers, 40 of whom signed a letter written by Democratic Rep. Marty Meehan, who has been spearheading the charge to end the military’s flawed DADT policy. Meehan’s bill has 124 co-sponsors but Congress and the Defense Department have expressed little interest in reviewing it.
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05.23.07
Posted in Advocate Articles, Gay Rights at 4:22 pm by pikapp44
Gay men remain banned for life from donating blood, the government said Wednesday, leaving in place — for now — a 1983 prohibition meant to prevent the spread of HIV through transfusions.
The Food and Drug Administration reiterated its long-standing policy on its Web site Wednesday, more than a year after the Red Cross and two other blood groups criticized the policy as “medically and scientifically unwarranted.”
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05.21.07
Posted in D's Thoughts, Gay Portal at 4:30 pm by pikapp44
Orlando Florida’s Gay Days Celebration is not a single event. It is a total gay and lesbian vacation experience. Gay Days is comprised of multiple events staged at world famous attractions, gay & lesbian clubs, and unique venues. May 29- June 4
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05.16.07
Posted in D's Thoughts, Gay Rights at 6:31 pm by pikapp44
The marriages of more than 170 gay couples from New York who wed in Massachusetts before last July are valid because New York had not yet explicitly banned same-sex marriages, a Massachusetts judge ruled.
Couples are barred from marrying in Massachusetts if their marriages would be prohibited in their home states. The New York Court of Appeals ruled against same-sex marriages on July 6, 2006.
Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders had asked for clarification of the status of New York couples who married in Massachusetts before that ruling. Massachusetts became the first state in the country to allow gay marriage in May 2004.
Suffolk Superior Court Judge Thomas Connolly ruled last week that those early marriages are legally valid.
“Just being able to say without any qualifications — ‘we’re married’ — it feels great,” said Amy Zimmerman, a New York City resident who married Tanya Wexler in Somerville on May 19, 2004, the third day same-sex weddings were allowed in Massachusetts.
A spokesman for New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo indicated that his office considers the marriages at issue valid.
“Since 2004, it has been the position of the attorney general’s office that New York law presumptively requires the recognition of marriages validly performed in other jurisdictions,” John Milgrim said. The opinion he cited came from Cuomo’s predecessor, Gov. Eliot Spitzer.
New York state has recognized same-sex marriages in some cases — those performed in Canada, for instance, are considered in determining public employees’ retirement benefits. But in 2005 a state appeals court ruled that a man could not sue a hospital for malpractice in the death of his longtime partner, despite their civil union in Vermont.
Michael Long, who heads New York’s Conservative Party, predicted Connolly’s ruling will not hold up in New York if gay couples press for marriage rights there.
“It’s wishful thinking by some homosexual couples that the interpretation of a particular judge will change their status,” Long said. “The law in the state of New York is very clear — marriage is between a man and a woman.”
Although the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court said in March 2006 that gay couples from states with no “express prohibition” of same-sex marriage could marry in Massachusetts, it was unclear at that time whether gay marriage was specifically banned in New York and Rhode Island.
Connolly ruled in September that gay couples from Rhode Island have the right to marry in Massachusetts because laws in their state do not expressly prohibit same-sex marriage. Whether Rhode Island honors those marriages is an unsettled issue; its Legislature has rejected same-sex marriage, but its attorney general issued a nonbinding opinion this year advising his state to recognize those conducted in Massachusetts.
Susan Sommer, senior counsel for Lambda Legal, a New York-based gay rights organization, said New York common law has held that as long as a marriage is valid where it is performed, it will be respected in New York.
“Not everybody along the way has agreed — there’s been some litigation around it — but the clear direction is one of growing respect and recognition,” she said.
Spitzer, a Democrat, has proposed that gay marriage be legalized, but so far has failed to convince either the Republican-led state Senate or the Democratic-controlled state Assembly to do so.
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05.14.07
Posted in Advocate Articles at 5:03 pm by pikapp44
Even though the increasingly bloody Iraq war grows more unpopular by the day and despite (or maybe because of) the fact he publicly referred to gays and lesbians as immoral, Marine general Peter Pace appears to be in line for a second term as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
In March, Pace told The Chicago Tribune, ”I believe that homosexual acts between individuals are immoral and that we should not condone immoral acts. I do not believe that the armed forces of the United States are well served by saying through our policies that it’s OK to be immoral in any way.”
As of Thursday, 3,382 American soldiers have been killed in the Iraq war, and 25,242 wounded.
President Bush is expected to nominate Pace for another two-year term. If confirmed, Pace will have served as one of the nations’s top two military leaders for eight years, longer than anyone who has served as chairman and vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs.
Pace must receive approval to serve more than six years as either the chair or vice chair. And he must be allowed to serve on active duty beyond age 62, which he turns in November.
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05.12.07
Posted in Gay Rights at 3:20 pm by pikapp44
Gov. Ted Kulongoski signed legislation into law Wednesday morning that will recognize same-sex unions as domestic partnerships and ban discrimination against gays and lesbians.
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05.10.07
Posted in Advocate Articles, Gay Rights at 12:58 pm by pikapp44
Oregon on Wednesday joined a growing list of states prepared to offer gay couples at least some of the benefits of marriage.
Gov. Ted Kulongoski signed legislation creating domestic partnerships for gays and lesbians in the state starting January 1. He also signed a bill that outlaws discrimination based on sexual orientation, effective the same date.
Opponents of the two bills said they planned to launch a signature-gathering campaign next week to try to refer both measures to the November 2008 ballot.
The domestic-partnership law will enable same-sex couples to enter into contractual relationships that carry many of the benefits offered to married couples. The other law will ban discrimination against gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgender people in employment, housing, and access to public accommodations.
So far, only Massachusetts allows gay couples to marry. Vermont, Connecticut, California, New Jersey, Maine, and Washington have laws allowing either civil unions or domestic partnerships, and Hawaii extends certain spousal rights to same-sex couples and cohabiting heterosexual pairs. The New Hampshire legislature also recently approved a civil unions measure that Gov. John Lynch has said he will sign
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