TOP6NEWS - Date 6.24.05

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1-NEWS: New Brunswick courts redefine m
2-NEWS: CA appeals court: lesbian can seek visitation rights
3-NEWS: 7th circuit: Lawrence doesn't give right to incest
4-NEWS: London mayor threatens borough for not holding ss ceremonies
5-NEWS: Not all gays necessarily want ssm
6-NEWS: SSM isn't the whole answer
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1-NEWS: New Brunswick courts redefine m

N.B. courts redefine marriage
Thursday, June 23, 2005 Updated at 4:17 PM EDT Canadian Press
Moncton — A New Brunswick judge redefined common-law marriage in the province on Thursday as the union of “two persons” rather than a man and a woman.
The decision, in just a few sentences, has the effect of legalizing same-sex marriage in the province and leaving Prince Edward Island, Alberta and the Northwest Territories as the last non-federal jurisdictions in the country not to recognize same-sex marriage.
Court of Queen's Bench Justice Judith Clendening issued her decision in the wake of a June 15 hearing in Moncton where lawyer Alison Menard made the petition to redefine marriage on behalf of four same-sex couples.

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2-NEWS: CA appeals court: lesbian can seek visitation rights

Associated Press, June 23, 2005 California court rules in favor of visitation for lesbian mom
A lesbian coparent is entitled to seek visitation with the child that she jointly brought into the world and coparented with her former partner, the California court of appeal ruled on Wednesday. The legal issues presented in the case are the same as those in three other cases currently pending before the California supreme court.
The woman, identified only as Angela G., and her former partner were in a committed relationship and decided to have a child together through artificial insemination, using an anonymous sperm donor. Angela paid for the insemination and participated fully in preparing for the child's birth. After the child was born in 1988, Angela and her partner raised the child together. When the couple separated in September of 2000, Angela initially had regular visitation and paid child support.

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3-NEWS: 7th circuit: Lawrence doesn't give right to incest

Muth v. Frank, No. 03-3984 (7th Cir. June 22, 2005)) From blog “How Appealing’
Incest isn't best: A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit has today issued a decision rejecting a state prisoner's argument that Wisconsin's incest statute is unconstitutional insofar as it seeks to criminalize a sexual relationship between two consenting adults.

Decision
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4-NEWS: London mayor threatens borough for not holding ss ceremonies

The Mayor of London Ken Livingstone has threatened the borough of Bromley with legal action over its refusal to host ceremonies when performing civil partnerships later this year.
Livingstone has told Bromley's Council Leader Stephen Carr that the reported attempts to discourage lesbian and gay couples from registering their relationship in the area were "mean spirited", indicating that he is looking into the possibility of challenging the council's actions in court.
According to local press, Carr and other councillors in Bromley have slammed the new laws, which give legal recognition to lesbian and gay couples for the first time.
Councillor Colin Bloom told The Bromley Times last week that the news laws would "undermine families".

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5-NEWS: Not all gays necessarily want ssm

The Villager, NY, June 24, 2005
All not wedded to marriage, but most like ring of it By Johanna Petersson On the front page of last week’s New York Times Sunday magazine, in a black-and-white photo, two middle-aged women are kissing, holding champagne flutes. Over the photo a large red bar is drawn, with the headline, “What’s their real problem with gay marriage? (It’s the gay part.)” But for some radical gay activists and feminists the problem is marriage — in their opinion an obsolete conservative institution — and that the gay community should aim higher; aim for liberation. On the other hand, for the majority of gays and lesbians, marriage is a matter of civil liberty that should be awarded to everyone.
Bill Dobbs said he gets shivers down his spine whenever he mentions Love Makes a Marriage, an organization promoting gay marriage rights. Dobbs has been a gay activist for more than three decades but he thinks the gay movement is losing its soul and becoming “middle class” by pressing for marriage.

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6-NEWS: SSM isn't the whole answer

Reality Check
In the quest for marriage, don't leave the rest of us behind By Jeff Epperly Bay Windows Published: Thursday, June 23, 2005
If you magically landed from another planet into America in 2005 you'd easily get the impression that lesbians, gay men and bisexuals want and need nothing more to be happy than to get married and have children.
All of these things are relatively recent concepts in the struggle for our equality. Yet an alien visitor might wonder if we were all miserable, lonely, childless outcasts before these other struggles came along. Of course we weren't because we had to, out of necessity, build our own concepts of family, friendships and togetherness.
It wasn't that long before many of us came to the realization that you had members of this community killing themselves in despair over the thought of never being able to take part in the grand design assumed to be the birthright of heterosexuals: grow up, get married, have children. Being shut out of this dream was cause for many of us to take a long, hard look at it and discover that, truth be told, the dream doesn't work out all that well for a lot of heterosexuals.

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