TOP6NEWS - Date 7.19.05

---

1-NEWS: Canadian may lose job for not m ss couple
2-NEWS: SSM vote in Canadian Senate could come Thursday
3-NEWS: National M Project finds no of m and divorces declining
4-OP-ED: R. Santorum: The Constitutional wrecking ball started w/ Griswold
5-OP-ED: M. Daum: The folly of putting labels on sexuality
6-OP-ED: Becker, Posner: The law and economics of ssm
________________________________________________________
1-NEWS: Canadian may lose job for not m ss couple

By GLORIA GALLOWAY 
After tying the knot for more than 3,400 people, Orville Nichols expects to become the first person in Canada to be fired for refusing to marry a gay couple.
Mr. Nichols, a 69-year-old marriage commissioner from Regina, says performing same-sex marriages does not accord with his religious and personal beliefs. And Saskatchewan Justice Minister Frank Quennell made it clear late last year that refusal is not an option for civic officials in his province.
The standoff intensified after Mr. Nichols said no to a gay couple who asked him to perform their wedding in early May.
The couple, who refused to talk about the case with The Globe and Mail, subsequently filed a complaint with the Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission and now Mr. Nichols's job is on the line. But he says he will not go down without a fight.
"I will never do it," he said in a telephone interview, "and if they take my commission away before this is settled, [his son, a lawyer] is going to go for a court injunction."

Full Article
BACK TO TOP
________________________________________________________
2-NEWS: SSM vote in Canadian Senate could come Thursday

Canadian Press, Canada, July 18, 2005
Liberals plan to cut off debate on same-sex marriage, push it through Senate
ALEXANDER PANETTA
OTTAWA (CP) - The Liberals in the Senate are poised to clamp down on debate over same-sex marriage and drive historic Bill C-38 through its final stage later this week.
A decisive vote could come Thursday on the landmark legislation, which would then become law and make Canada the world's fourth country to sanction same-sex marriage. The Liberals say they will need to invoke time allocation to keep the debate from dragging on interminably.
"The Conservative party has been opposed to this legislation from the beginning and will continue to fight its passage," Mike Scandiffio, a spokesman for Liberal Senate leader Jack Austin, said Monday.

Full Article
BACK TO TOP
________________________________________________________
3-NEWS:  National M Project finds no of m and divorces declining

Divorce declining, but so is marriage
By Sharon Jayson, USA TODAY
July 18, 2005
Divorce is on the decline in the USA, but a report to be released today suggests that may be due more to an increase in people living together than to more lasting marriages.
Couples who once might have wed and then divorced now are not marrying at all, according to The State of our Unions 2005. The annual report, which analyzes Census and other data, is issued by the National Marriage Project at New Jersey's Rutgers University.

Full Article
Report
BACK TO TOP
________________________________________________________
4-OP-ED: R. Santorum: The Constitutional wrecking ball started w/ Griswold

By Senator Rick Santorum
EDITOR'S NOTE:: This is the second in a series of five excerpts from It Takes a Family, by Sen. Rick Santorum. Together they comprise chapter 23, “The Rule of Judges.” (The first part is here.)
How did this all start? Several “strands” of major Supreme Court decisions, bound together, have dismantled older constitutional understandings and enshrined the new morality. On the questions of marriage, family, and sex, that string begins with the 1965 Griswold decision. In that case, a Connecticut law that outlawed the use of contraceptives, even by married couples, was ruled unconstitutional. Now, before you jump to conclusions, let me clearly state that this law was badly written, and I would not have supported it or its intent. Nonetheless, it is in this case that the Court “discovered” a “right to privacy” in the U.S. Constitution. Of course, such a right does not appear anywhere in the text of the Constitution. Rather, the Court’s majority discovered — or invented — such a right from the “emanations” and “penumbras” of rights found in the First, Fourth, Fifth, Ninth, and Fourteenth Amendments.

Full Article
BACK TO TOP
________________________________________________________
5-OP-ED: M. Daum: The folly of putting labels on sexuality

By Meghan Daum, Meghan Daum is an essayist and novelist living in Los Angeles.
Los Angeles Times
For a few moments two weeks ago, everything seemed exhilaratingly clear. On July 5, the New York Times published an article titled "Gay, Straight, or Lying? Bisexuality Revisited."
The article reported on the findings of a study in which psychologists from Northwestern University and Toronto's Center for Addiction and Mental Health observed arousal responses in 100 men who identified themselves as either straight, gay or bisexual.
The study was conducted by hooking electrodes up to these men and monitoring their responses as they watched various forms of pornography.
And the result: Straight men liked straight porn and the gay men liked gay porn. As for the self-professed bisexual men, a third liked straight porn and two-thirds liked gay porn. None of them responded to both. In other words, the research suggested, male bisexuality, like Bigfoot, the Easter Bunny and possibly the real estate bubble, is a myth.

Full Article
BACK TO TOP
________________________________________________________
6-OP-ED: Becker, Posner: The law and economics of ssm

The Law and Economics of Gay Marriage Posner

The surprising decision of Spain, once the most Catholic country in Europe (except for Ireland), to recognize gay marriage, a decision that comes in the wake of a similar decision by Canada and, of course, by the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts—presents an appropriate occasion on which to consider what light economic analysis might shed on the issue.
Economics focuses on the consequences of social action. One clear negative consequence is the outrage felt by opponents of gay marriage and of homosexual rights in general. Philosophers like John Stuart Mill would not consider that such outrage should figure in the social-welfare calculus; Mill famously argued in On Liberty that an individual has no valid interest in the activities of other people that don't affect him except psychologically. (Mill had in mind the indignation felt by English people at Mormon polygamy occurring thousands of miles away in Utah.) But that is not a good economic argument because there is no difference from an economic standpoint between physical and emotional harm; either one lowers the utility of the harmed person. 

Full Article
BACK TO TOP