TOP6NEWS - Date 7.29.05

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1-NEWS:  GLAD, amicus file supporting summary judgment: CT CUs not enough
2-NEWS: Class action suit coming against UK govt for dp inheritance taxes
3-NEWS: ME voters will get say on so law
4-OPP-RESEARCH: WashBlade looks at pro ssm strategy in States
5-OP-ED: K. Parker: Parent A and Parent B--and baby makes C?
6-FEATURE: Many TG in Iran because of one
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1-NEWS: GLAD, amicus file supporting summary judgment: CT CUs not enough

Gay Marriage Remains A Goal
July 29, 2005
By DANIELA ALTIMARI, Courant Staff Writer
Let's be clear about one thing," said Bennett Klein, a lawyer with Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders, or GLAD, at an afternoon press conference in Hartford. "The civil union law is a political compromise. ... Courts have an entirely different role."
The courts, Klein added, "do not pay attention to which way the political wind blows."
The Boston-based group, which two years ago won a landmark legal case that led Massachusetts to become the first state in the nation to legalize gay marriage, filed a lawsuit last summer on behalf seven Connecticut couples seeking the right to marry in this state. The case is pending in Superior Court in New Haven.

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2-NEWS: Class action suit coming against UK govt for dp inheritance taxes

By Katie Coyne and Clare Dyer Thursday July 28, 2005 The Guardian
The government may be forced to pay back millions in inheritance tax to bereaved gay partners because they were not offered the same exemption from the tax as married partners.
Under the Human Rights Act, which came into force in October 2000, lawyers believe surviving gay partners may be able to claim back inheritance tax collected on their partners' death if a test case is successful.
Solicitor Clive Margrave-Jones and Financial Planners Ltd are putting together a group of individuals who have been affected by tax rules to challenge the law that allows widows and widowers but not gay partners to inherit the other partner's property free of inheritance tax.
Mr Margrave-Jones, of the law firm Margraves in Llandrindod Wells, has obtained a legal opinion backing the case from Hugh Tomlinson, a leading human rights QC at Matrix, the chambers Cherie Booth QC also works from.

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3-NEWS: ME voters will get say on so law

By GREGORY D. KESICH, Portland Press Herald Writer
For the fourth time in a decade, Maine voters will be asked whether they want to extend legal protection from discrimination to people who are gay.
On Thursday, Maine Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap announced that gay-rights opponents had gathered enough signatures to force a vote on the civil rights law passed this year by the Legislature and signed by Gov. John Baldacci.
Opponents had to gather at least 50,519 signatures, or the equivalent of 10 percent of the total votes cast in the last gubernatorial election, to force a "people's veto" referendum on Election Day. On Thursday, Dunlap declared that 56,650 signatures collected this spring were valid, paving the way for a vote on Nov. 8.

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4-OPP-RESEARCH: WashBlade looks at pro ssm strategy in States

BY RYAN LEE Friday, July 29, 2005 Editors’ note: This story is the second of two parts on how the fight over gay marriage impacted the gay rights movements in states that faced ballot measures in 2004, or face them in the coming months, and those that did not.
Not all gay organizations in states that suffered losses on gay marriage in 2004 are shying away from fights over rights for same-sex couples.
A gay marriage ban passed in Oregon in 2004 by a 56-44 percent margin, despite national groups like the Human Rights Campaign and the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force funneling the vast majority of their anti-amendment resources into that state. Earlier this month, the Oregon state Senate passed a bill creating civil unions supported by Basic Rights Oregon, a statewide gay group.
The Human Rights Campaign said it contributed $474,000 to last year’s ballot fight in Oregon, some $314,000 directly to the group fighting the measure and $160,000 on get-out-the-vote efforts.

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5-OP-ED: K. Parker: Parent A and Parent B--and baby makes C? 

Parent A and Parent B - and baby makes C?
Kathleen Parker (archive)
July 29, 2005
The slippery slope that wasn't supposed to happen once same-sex marriage was granted is making Everest jealous.
In Massachusetts this week, Gov. Mitt Romney has been butting heads with same-sex couples over birth certificates for their newborns. I'll give you a minute to wrap your mind around that concept.
The problem is that birth certificates as currently written reflect archaic notions of procreation, that is, involving a mother and father. Thus, gay and lesbian parents have asked the state to replace "mother" and "father" with Parent A and Parent B.
And we thought Dr. Seuss was just being silly when he created Thing One and Thing Two in his "Cat in the Hat" series.

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6-FEATURE: Many TG in Iran because of one

Tehran the unlikely sex change capital of the world.
By Robert Tait
Salon
July 28, 2005  |  It could take something extraordinary to move the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to issue a fatwa (or religious and legal decree). Novelist Salman Rushdie did it by challenging the sanctity of the prophet Mohammed in "The Satanic Verses," provoking Iran's austere revolutionary leader into pronouncing the death sentence. For Maryam Khatoon Molkara it required the equally dramatic step of confronting Khomeini in person and proving, in graphic terms, that she was a woman trapped inside a man's body.
To do so, she had to endure a ferocious beating from bodyguards before coming face to face with the ayatollah in his living room, covered in blood, dressed in a man's suit and, thanks to a course of hormone treatment, sporting fully formed female breasts.
"It was behesht [paradise]," Molkara, 55, says of the meeting 22 years ago. "The atmosphere, the moment and the person were paradise for me. I had the feeling that from then on there would be a sort of light." Light or not, the encounter produced, in turn, a religious judgment that -- unlike the unfulfilled edict on Rushdie -- has had an enduring effect that still resonates. Because today, the Islamic Republic of Iran occupies the unlikely role of global leader for sex changes.

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