Chile’s El Mercurio newspaper has reported that the Uruguayan Parliament is considering legislation legalising same-sex marriage.
The bill is being driven by the country’s ruling coalition, the Frente Amplio which has a majority in both houses – giving it an excellent chance of succeeding.
... The bill, would amend the country’s Civil Code to refer to spouses instead of husband and wife, meaning transgender and intersex people would also be covered, and would allow non-biological parents in a marriage to be given parental rights and obligations to their partners’ biological children.
Last week in the North Carolina House two Democrats and two Republicans introduced a bill defining marriage as "the union of one man and one woman at one time." Similar language was introduced in the Senate in late February. If the Senate and House approve the language the issue will be referred to the voters of North Carolina in the 2012 November ballot.
Recent polling by the Civitas Institute found that a large majority (64 percent) of NC voters want the opportunity to vote on marriage, and that 65% favor a state constitutional amendment defining marriage as between one man and one woman (poll conducted in December 2010).
The changes for passage of this amendment look good, as we wrote in back in early March:
In North Carolina, marriage advocates say odds look good for passing a marriage amendment.
North Carolina is the only southern state that has not added a marriage amendment to its constitution. Democratic leaders, with a lot of help from Tim Gill's money, claimed it was "unnecessary."
Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum's underdog presidential run picked up some validation on Saturday as the near-certain candidate won a South Carolina straw poll at the GOP convention in the state's largest county.
Santorum's socially conservative bona fides registered with many of the 431 voters who cast ballots at the Greenville County presidential straw poll, and his frequent South Carolina visits over the past few months appeared to have paid off.
Santorum won 31 percent of the votes cast, while former House Speaker Newt Gingrich finished in second place with 14 percent. Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann and business mogul turned reality TV star Donald Trump tied for third place.
Ontario Catholic schools will not be permitted to use the support groups that are being mandated under the government’s controversial equity and inclusive education strategy to counsel homosexual students to “reform their sexuality.” The government revealed the unprecedented challenge to the province’s publicly-funded Catholic education system in comments to LifeSiteNews.
Some Catholics have suggested that the student-led support groups for homosexuals could be used as a means to provide authentic pastoral support based on Catholic Church teaching. But the Ministry of Education told LifeSiteNews that that won’t fly.
“Groups for LGBT students that counsel the students to reform their sexuality or try to stop them from being gay are not considered consistent with the ministry’s equity policy which is to support students,” said Mike Feenstra, press secretary for Minister of Education Leona Dombrowsky.
As for Louis Marinelli, Brian Brown responded to his announcement he no longer favors protecting marriage this way:
"Louis Marinelli worked in a volunteer capacity as a bus driver during our summer marriage tour. Around this time, NOM began to pay him as a part-time consultant for helping us expand our internet reach. He has since chosen a different focus. We wish him well."
Justin Katz is a local blogger in the Ocean State, and he thinks the right way forward is something along the lines of the reciprocal benefits proposal floated earlier this week:
The relationship formed in homosexual couples is different in substantive ways from the relationship formed between heterosexual couples, most critically in the latter's ability to create children almost casually. It is not bigotry to insist that such an ability is not frivolous, and it is eminently reasonable to suggest that civic policies should maintain room for the encouragement of cultural acknowledgment of that difference. Doing so does not "create two classes," as Marriage Equality Rhode Island spokesman Bill Fischer asserts; it accurately recognizes two categories of behavior.
... intellectually, the same-sex marriage cause is not about equal rights; it's about erasing a real distinction between two different human relationships. And it's about eliminating the right of Americans to recognize that distinction.
Target actually won some concessions in this week's ruling in their ongoing case against Canvas for a Cause:
A San Diego Superior Court judge ruled Thursday that local same-sex marriage advocates must remain 30 feet from the entrances of all Target stores in California and that they may only approach shoppers one entrance at a time.
Minneapolis-based Target had wanted a preliminary injunction to stop the canvassing altogether in areas it owned and controlled statewide.
The massive retailer sought its injunction in court on March 25 following a March 1 incident at a Poway Target between a shopper and a persistent activist from the Hillcrest-based Canvass for a Cause.
The organization formed 18 months ago to lobby for same-sex marriage nationwide. Its volunteers fan out in two- or four-person teams daily to talk to same-sex marriage supporters and detractors, and to gather signatures for their cause. (San Diego Union Tribune)
They say the people now support gay marriage in Massachusetts. So why are politicians there now proposing to limit the right of the citizens of Massachusetts to amend their own constitution?
This is an extraordinary admission they do not trust their own people, even after years of SSM.
SB 12 would amend Article 48 of the constitution to not allow any initiative petition that “restricts the rights set forth in the MA constitution to freedom and equality, or the right of each individual to be protected by society in the enjoyment of life, liberty and property, according to standing laws.” In plain English, this amendment would essentially eliminate the citizen initiative process because there are very few subjects that do not deal with freedom, equality, life, liberty and property!
The proponents of this bill claim that it is “too easy” for citizens to amend the constitution, which is preposterous. Placing a proposed amendment before the people through an initiative process is so prohibitively difficult in Massachusetts that the process has rarely, if ever, been used or succeeded. In the history of the Commonwealth, only 13 initiative petitions to amend the constitution ever succeeded in collecting the required number of signatures, and only three of those were approved by the Legislature to go on the ballot, of which two were approved by the voters. (Massachusetts Family Institute)
Local blogger Hank Beckman of the Wheaton Patchreports:
Author and economist Jennifer Roback Morse spoke to Wheaton College students Thursday about the institution of marriage, and why legalizing same sex marriage would be troublesome for society.
... Morse stressed that redefining marriage undermined what she called the “essential public purpose of marriage.”
She noted that, in a legal sense, attaching children to their parents was the primary reason for marriage to even exist. “If it weren’t for that purpose, I don’t think we would need marriage at all,” she said. “Procreation is key to marriage.”
Morse said that court decisions back up her opinion on the essential role of procreation and rejected the idea that banning same sex marriage meant that gay people were being treated differently under the law. “They are situated differently,” she said. “It is only when courts say it (procreation) is not an important function of marriage that same sex marriage is supported.”
Richard Waghorne, formerly the Chief Political Commentator for the Irish Daily Mail, and a journalist and columnist, is causing waves in the UK after publishing an article in the Irish Daily Mail saying "I'm gay but I'm against same-sex marriages." He says over five thousand people have visited his personal website to read the full article since it was published on Tuesday:
Explaining that you oppose gay marriage as a gay man tends to get a baffled response at first. This is understandable given how quickly the debate on gay marriage can collapse into allegations of homophobia. The message, explicit or implicit, is often that being anti-gay marriage means being in some way anti-gay.
I have watched with growing irritation as principled opponents of gay marriage have put up with a stream of abuse for explaining their position. Public figures who try to do so routinely have to contend with the charge that they are bigoted or homophobic. ...The reflex response from many gay marriage advocates is to paint all dissent as prejudice, as if the only reason for defending marriage as it has existed to date is some variety of bigotry or psychological imbalance.
Actually, gay people should defend the traditional understanding of marriage as strongly as everyone else. Given that it is being undermined in the name of gay people, with consequences for future generations, it is all the more important that gay people who are opposed to gay marriage speak up.
He continues about his view about what marriage is and why government and society should care:
Marriage is vital as a framework within which children can be brought up by a man and woman. Not all marriages, of course, involve child-raising. And there are also, for that matter, same-sex couples already raising children. But the reality is that marriages tend towards child-raising and same-sex partnerships do not.
... A wealth of research demonstrates the marriage of a man and a woman provides children with the best life outcomes, that children raised in marriages that stay together do best across a whole range of measures. This is certainly not to cast aspersions on other families, but it does underscore the importance of marriage as an institution.
... What [SSM] amounts to is the kind of marriage that puts adults before children. That, in my opinion, is ultimately selfish, and far too high a price to pay simply for the token gesture of treating opposite-sex relationships and same-sex relationships identically. And it is a token gesture. Isn’t it common sense, after all, to treat different situations differently? To put it personally, I do not feel in the least bit discriminated against by the fact that I cannot marry someone of the same-sex. I understand and accept that there are good reasons for this.
Waghorne believes that the future of the marriage debate will favor those who believe in one-man, one-woman marriage:
Although gay people and gay relationships have been rapidly becoming more visible, I would not be surprised if the case for gay marriage actually weakens in the future. Much of the support for gay marriage that exists today is instinctive, stemming from the fact that people do not want to be thought of as anti-gay. But that impulse itself only exists because we are still living in the shadow of the recent past. In the already foreseeable future, anti-gay attitudes as such will be all but unthinkable, in the way that actual homophobia already has a scarcely-threatening, almost antique quality to it.
Surely it’s time to have a proper conversation about gay marriage, a conversation where people are no longer made to feel that if they do not offer knee-jerk support to it, they will be branded anti-gay. Only then will the essence and the real reason for supporting traditional marriage be allowed to come to the fore again. The best interests of the children of the nation must always come first.
Here are some other recent pro-marriage views published in major UK papers:
The giant Target Corp. has lost its effort to stop local grass-roots activist group Canvass For A Cause (CFAC) from talking to customers outside their stores in California.
Superior Court Judge Jeffrey B. Barton released his ruling [yesterday] denying Target’s motion for an injunction to stop CFAC from petitioning customers.
During the hearing on March 25, CFAC contended that its right to free speech was being challenged by the lawsuit, while Target claimed the grass-roots group’s tactics were harming its business.
See our previous coverage of this story here and here.
The California Legislature could soon pass a bill that would require school textbooks and teachers to incorporate information on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) Americans into their curriculum.
The Fair, Accurate, Inclusive and Respectful Education Act, or SB48, which mimics a bill previously vetoed by then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, made it one step closer to becoming law Tuesday after being approved by the state’s Senate Judiciary Committee.
The bill, introduced by state Sen. Mark Leno, could have a nationwide impact if passed because California is such a big buyer of textbooks that publishers often incorporate the state’s standards into books distributed to other states.
Lobbying efforts are intensifying over a proposed regulatory change that would prohibit Virginia adoption agencies from discriminating based on sexual orientation.
... The Human Rights Campaign today ran a full page ad in The Times-Dispatch calling on McDonnell to support the regulatory changes that Gov. Timothy M. Kaine's administration set in motion before he left office.
... The Family Equality Council is also calling on McDonnell to support the change. (Richmond Times-Dispatch)
As if the tax code weren't already complicated enough. A blogger for the Atlantic writes about gay activists challenging DOMA through how they file their taxes:
The Obama administration says it will not defend the federal ban on gay marriage in court, but tax season could force the issue.
Jezebel points us to an organization called Refuse to Lie, which is advocates that married gay couples (whose marriages are recognized under state law, but not, as the Defense of Marriage Act still stands, under federal law) file as single, yet attach [a] disclaimer.
The above named taxpayer married a person of his/her same sex in [place] in [year]. The taxpayer has not filed this return as "married" (either jointly or separately) solely because the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) defines marriage as a legal union between a man and a woman. By filing as "single," the taxpayer is in no way disavowing his/her marriage.
The next step? Refuse to Lie is calling on their followers to sue the government:
File two single returns (including the attachment affirming the marriage) and then file an amended return, filing jointly. The amended return is a 1040X. This is what the plaintiffs in the GLAD case did. Once the IRS rejects the amended return, or if six months passes and they do nothing, the taxpayers who file an amended return have the right to file suit in federal district court claiming the refund.
If the Obama Administration had consistently defended DOMA, gay activists would have less reason to pull stunts like this one. Which is all the more reason to support our efforts at www.defendDOMA.com to send a clear message that DOMA will stand, no matter how much extra paperwork gay activists create.
The giant Target Corp. has lost its effort to stop local grass-roots activist group Canvass For A Cause (CFAC) from talking to customers outside their stores in California.
