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TOP6NEWS - October 13, 2004 1-NEWS: LA Appeals Court sends m amendment to Supreme Court 2-NEWS: GA responds to m amendment suit 3-NEWS: Canadian Human Rights Commission fines man for comment 4-OP-ED: J. Roback Morse: What divorce has to do w/ ssm 5-OP-ED: J. Epp-Buckingham on religious freedom in Canada 6-OP-ED: UK: 'It's about being accepted by society' ________________________________________________________ 1-NEWS: LA Appeals Court sends m amendment to Supreme Court Appeal court sends same-sex marriage question to Supreme Court10/13/2004, 11:18 a.m. CT The Associated Press http://www.nola.com/newsflash/louisiana/index.ssf?/base/news-12/109768467899030.xml&storylist=louisiana BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — A legal fight over the recently passed constitutional amendment outlawing same-sex marriage and civil unions in Louisiana was kicked to the state Supreme Court on Wednesday. A five-judge panel of the 1st Circuit Court of Appeal heard arguments in the case, but sent the case to the high court without ruling on any issues. ... ________________________________________________________ 2-NEWS: GA responds to m amendment suit State files response to appeal in gay marriage lawsuit The state filed a brief yesterday in response to an appeal filed by the Georgia American Civil Liberties Union, Lambda Legal and Atlanta law firm of Alston and Bird last week. That appeal was in response to a lower court's ruling that refused to stop the statewide vote on a proposed constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. The state Supreme Court granted a request for an expedited hearing, scheduling oral arguments for next Tuesday. The state's legal brief cites Gaskins versus Dorsey, a 1920 case in which the high court ruled it lacked jurisdiction to stop a referendum. ... ________________________________________________________ 3-NEWS: Canadian Human Rights Commission fines man for comment Oct 11 2004 09:30 AM EDTMan told to pay gay man $1,000 for comment http://montreal.cbc.ca/regional/servlet/View?filename=mon_humanrights20041011 MONTREAL - Quebec's Human Rights Commission has ordered a used car salesman in Sorel to pay a gay man $1,000 for a derogatory comment made three years ago. In 2001, Marcel Bardier told the man's travelling companion to keep an eye on him because he was a "fifi", a french word that equates to "fag". The man, who cannot be identified because of a court order, filed a complaint with the Commission which said the comment caused him to feel dehumanized, humiliated and degraded. Bardier told the Commission that he had nothing against homosexuals, but was simply acting in a fatherly way to the man's companion by warning him of his sexuality. ... ________________________________________________________ 4-OP-ED: J. Roback Morse: What divorce has to do w/ ssm Striving for the Marriage Ideal Most Americans consider no-fault divorce a done-deal: feminists have effectively trashed the dreaded 1950's when divorce was considered a scandal. Few public opinion leaders are willing to link divorce to the arguments for heterosexual marriage. But we can’t win the fight for heterosexual marriage without confronting the issue of divorce. Far from being a losing strategy, we can only win if we bring the divorce issue out of the closet. Divorce is in the background of the gay marriage debate in at least three ways. First, gay marriage is the end of the trend that no-fault divorce began. The legal innovation of unilateral divorce began to reduce marriage to nothing but a temporary association of individuals. If marriage is merely a free association of individuals, there is no principled reason to exclude gay couples, or even larger groupings of sexual partners. The permanence of marriage was one of the key features that distinguished it from an ordinary contract. Second, the high divorce rate and the resulting non-permanence of marriage made the institution of marriage more attractive to same-sex couples than it otherwise would be. If marriage still meant one to a customer for life, I seriously doubt that we’d be hearing about same-sex marriage today. Gay couples evidently have a more relaxed concept of both permanence and fidelity than do heterosexual couples. Gay activists would be much less likely to invest time and energy working for the right to marry, if divorce were available only for adultery or cruelty. Most importantly, the high divorce rate has made it difficult to articulate opposition to gay marriage. People who have been divorced may feel hypocritical if they voice opposition to a system they felt they had to use. People who secretly fear they may need a divorce someday are reluctant to bad-mouth the easy availability of divorce. People who are not confident in their own ability to keep their marriage together for a lifetime, won’t speak out against the culture of divorce. A significant subset of such people will be reluctant to voice their opposition to gay marriage. People who have lost confidence in marriage as an institution of exclusivity and permanence are simply not going to have the heart for a fight over gay marriage. Gay activists instinctively know this. It is surprising how often the topic of straight divorce comes up in the discussion of gay marriage. The arguments go something like this: "No-fault divorce has cut the link between marriage and permanence. Everyone accepts this. Easy divorce has also called into question to idea that marriage is an institution for the good of the kids. A society that accepts unilateral divorce is a society that is willing to sacrifice the welfare of children to the comfort and happiness of adults, at least to some extent. Since straight people are unwilling to give up no-fault divorce, you can’t very well claim that heterosexual marriage is about permanence and children. So how can you justify excluding gays from marriage?" ... When people have gone through a divorce, their response is not, "hey that was fun. Let’s do that again." No one aspires to have their children get divorced when they grow up. People would certainly prefer to learn how to avoid divorce. Figuring out how to live more comfortably with the person you married; figuring out how to keep love more actively alive; making a wiser choice of partner in the first place: all these areas need work. Individuals and institutions, laws and customs, all have room for constructive change. And society needs to reform itself in all these ways, regardless of what gay people do or don’t do, regardless of what the law says or doesn’t say about gay marriage. Of course, there is much more to be said about gay marriage, and about divorce, too, for that matter. But let’s not kid ourselves. The current demand for homosexual marriage and the sad prevalence of heterosexual divorce are part and parcel of the same trend toward reducing marriage to a loose association of sexual partners. All of us need for marriage to be more than that.
________________________________________________________ 5-OP-ED: J. Epp-Buckingham on religious freedom in Canada Standing up for religious freedomJanet Epp Buckingham National Post October 13, 2004 http://www.canada.com/national/nationalpost/news/comment/story.html?id=b5e0a6b7-16e2-43f6-a8ec-0b03c2873dd0 The proposed federal legislation redefining marriage would protect religious freedom for clergy. According to the draft bill, "Nothing in this Act affects the freedom of officials of religious groups to refuse to perform marriages that are not in accordance with their religious beliefs." From this wording, one would assume that Canadian religious officials already have this right. Yet Quebec is the only province in Canada that explicitly provides it. It is in part on this basis that Quebec has intervened in the reference on marriage that was argued before the Supreme Court of Canada last week. The divergent laws provide historical support for Quebec's stated view that "the provinces possess the exclusive competence to determine by what ceremony marriage may be celebrated and [so] a federal law in this respect is ultra vires." (My translation from the French.) Not some recent knee-jerk reaction, the Quebec government's law protecting clergy from being compelled to solemnize weddings dates back to 1969, when divorce was legalized and civil marriage introduced. The provision was included to protect Catholic priests from being compelled to marry persons who had obtained civil divorces but not a canonical annulment. That same vigilance in defence of clerical rights is needed once again -- not only in Quebec, but everywhere in Canada: Clergy need assurances that Canadian law will provide them with the freedom to decide whom they will marry. ... With the exception of Quebec, provincial ministers responsible for marriage have declined to take any action to protect religious freedom for clergy and civil marriage officials, citing the primacy of federal legislation. In the federal government's haste to take action, it has created a great deal of confusion. The Supreme Court must stand up for clerical freedom of religion -- either by upholding Ottawa's right to protect it through federal legislation, or by acceding to Quebec's demand that provinces be able to provide such freedoms through their own laws. Dr. Janet Epp Buckingham is Director, Law and Public Policy, with The Evangelical Fellowship of Canada, an intervener opposed to the redefinition of marriage in the Supreme Court of Canada marriage reference. She is also the co-author of a chapter contained in the recently released book Divorcing Marriage. ________________________________________________________ 6-OP-ED: UK: 'It's about being accepted by society' 'It is about being accepted in society' Their verdict Since we moved here I have been quite surprised by how liberal England is. As a child I had a picture of the stiff upper lip and didn't regard it as a liberal place. The civil partnership bill is about a feeling of being accepted in society and not feeling that we are being judged and not feeling like a second-class citizen. Legal impact I have heard some horror stories about a same-sex couple: two men. ... Financial impact ...
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