TOP6NEWS - Date 7.21.05

---

1-NEWS: Troy Perry will step down as MCC leader
2-NEWS: Italian opposition leader supports partner benefits
3-NEWS: Toronto man to be evicted from apartment for sign in favor of m
4-NEWS: SSM was inevitable in Canada
5-NEWS: Heritage backgrounder for Canadian ssm
6-NEWS: J. Sanchez: The looming battle over ss parenting
________________________________________________________
1-NEWS: Troy Perry will step down as MCC leader

Troy Perry Prepares To Step Down As Leader Of World's Largest Gay-Positive Denomination 
by Ed Welch 365Gay.com Los Angeles Bureau
Posted: July 20, 2005 
Los Angeles, California) Troy Perry, who founded the first Metropolitan Community Church in Los Angeles in 1968 and saw it grow to a worldwide movement of predominantly LGBT Christians, will step down as Moderator on the weekend at the denomination's General Conference in Calgary.
Perry will be succeeded by the Rev. Nancy Wilson.
Wilson has had a distinguished career within Metropolitan Community Churches. In 1976, she became the youngest person ever elected to the MCC Board of Elders and has served as an Elder since that time.

Full Article
BACK TO TOP
________________________________________________________
2-NEWS: Italian opposition leader supports partner benefits

365Gay.com, July 20, 2005
Italy's Opposition To Support Gay Partner Rights
by Malcolm Thornberry, 365Gay.com European Bureau Chief
(Rome) Italy's main opposition leader is taking up the fight to recognize same-sex couples. Center-left leader Romano Prodi says he will support a move to provide protections for gay and lesbian couples but, remains opposed to same-sex marriage.
Prodi says that he has the support of the entire coalition, a grouping of moderate parties that make up the opposition to the conservative government of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

Full Article
BACK TO TOP
________________________________________________________
3-NEWS: Toronto man to be evicted from apartment for sign in favor of m

Defend Marriage sign leads to eviction notice
BY DOMENIC D. NICASSIO
The Catholic Register
Toronto
The largest housing co-operative in Toronto is evicting a member with one day’s notice because he displayed a “defend marriage” sign on his balcony.
Lee Konik has lived on Church Street for 25 years in a building managed by City Park Co-operative Apartments. Church Street is the central avenue in Toronto’s “gay village.” The section of downtown Toronto is home to the third largest gay population in North America, after San Francisco and New York.

Full Article
BACK TO TOP
________________________________________________________
4-NEWS: SSM was inevitable in Canada

Web-exclusive comment
The forces of modernism
Why same-sex marriage was inevitable
By ALLAN LEVINE
Thursday, July 21, 2005 Updated at 12:08 AM EDT
Special to Globe and Mail Update
With royal assent given to the same-sex-marriage bill, the forces of modernism and progress have triumphed once again over traditionalism and conservatism. Despite the rancour of the vote in the House of Commons and heated discussions in the Senate, nothing could have been more inevitable: It's been an ongoing development in Canada and throughout the Western world for more than a century.
Indeed, even if Prime Minister Paul Martin and his Liberals had failed to win enough support for the new law, it's likely that, in time, it would have been implemented by another government - no matter what the Conservatives and other opponents argue. Historical perspective, much needed yet missing from the debate, can be instructive in this regard.

Full Article
BACK TO TOP
________________________________________________________
5-NEWS: Heritage backgrounder for Canadian ssm

Heritage Foundation, DC, July 20, 2005
Same-Sex “Marriage” in Canada: A Guide for American Legislators Backgrounder #1870 by Bradley C. S. Watson
Recent legal and political developments in Canada on same-sex “marriage” are enlightening for the American constitutional debate. Canada shares a number of important characteristics with the United States. It has a complex federal system, activist courts, and evolving public opinion on questions related to homosexuality. And on the issue of homosexual rights, Canada is a nation on the leading edge of change.
In 1999, Canadian law enshrined the traditional definition of marriage as between a man and a woman.1 This definition was supported by the Canadian people and was passed overwhelmingly by the Canadian Parliament. By early 2005, legislation was introduced in Parliament that would enact a new definition of marriage that includes same-sex couples. By late June, the legislation had passed in the House of Commons by a vote of 158 to 133.
One thing is clear from this development: Triggered by a series of court decisions, Canadian law and political attitudes have changed with remarkable speed. The rapidity and nature of these changes offer lessons for American legislators.

Full Article
BACK TO TOP
________________________________________________________
6-NEWS: J. Sanchez: The looming battle over ss parenting

All Happy Families
The looming battle over gay parenting
Julian Sanchez
Wayne LaRue Smith had never been so happy to be called bitch.
About two months earlier, Smith and his partner, Dan Skahen, had taken in a 3-year-old foster child we’ll call Charlie. The boy had emerged from the caseworker’s car redolent of stale cigarette smoke, hair matted and tangled, barely able to walk, and, except for the occasional raspy cry, stone silent. “We think,” whispered the caseworker, leaning in, “he’s retarded.”
Week after week, Smith recalls, Charlie refused to say anything. Then one day, as Smith was trying to prevent the boy from climbing around on the furniture, Charlie uttered the first word Smith had heard escape his lips: “Bitch!” Nonplussed at the vocabulary (“He didn’t learn that language from us!” Smith says), Smith was nevertheless delighted that the child had said something. His silence broken, Charlie pressed his tiny fists to his hips and added “Asshole!” before scampering away. Within weeks he was speaking in complete—and more polite—sentences.

Full Article
BACK TO TOP