TOP6NEWS - Date 9.13.05

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1-NEWS: Spokeswoman: Schwarzenegger won't change his mind
2-NEWS: SSM likely to be decided by 3 State Supreme Courts soon
3-NEWS: American Archbishop: men with 'strong homosexual inclinations' shouldn't be enrolled in Seminary
4-OP-ED: WashPost on CA ssm
5-OP-ED: Boston Globe on MA m amendment
6-FEATURE: Dan Savage on his son's homeless mom
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1-NEWS: Spokeswoman: Schwarzenegger won't change his mind

Gay rights advocates still trying to change Schwarzenegger's mind
Wyatt Buchanan, Chronicle Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 13, 2005

Activists and politicians upset by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's vow to veto the same-sex marriage bill that the state Legislature passed last week have delayed sending him the bill in a bid to change his mind.
A bill must be physically in the governor's possession before he can veto it. And the Assembly's leadership doesn't plan to deliver the gay marriage bill to Schwarzenegger's desk until the Sept. 23 deadline, Assemblyman Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, said Monday.

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2-NEWS: SSM likely to be decided by 3 State Supreme Courts soon

Gay Marriage Likely To Be Decided By Supreme Courts In 3 States
by Beth Shapiro 365Gay.com New York Bureau 
Posted: September 12, 2005  9:00 pm ET

(New York City) A decision could come at any time in a case seeking marriage rights for gay and lesbian couples in the state of Washington, the Supreme Court of New Jersey will hear a similar bid for gay marriage in the Garden State in this session and New York's highest court is likely to get a third case later this year.
The New Jersey high court opened its fall session today.
Seven same-sex couples in the state are suing to marry. (story) Represented by Lambda Legal, they argue that the New Jersey Constitution guarantees them the right to wed.

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3-NEWS: American Archbishop: men with 'strong homosexual inclinations' shouldn't be enrolled in Seminary

American Prelate: Ban Gay Priests From Catholic Church
by Rachel Zoll, Associated Press 
Posted: September 12, 2005  9:00 pm ET

(Washington) The American prelate overseeing a sweeping Vatican evaluation of every seminary in the United States has told a Catholic newspaper that men with "strong homosexual inclinations" should not be enrolled, even if they have remained celibate for years.
Archbishop Edwin O'Brien made the comments to the National Catholic Register newspaper as Roman Catholics await word of a much-anticipated Vatican document on whether gays should be barred from the priesthood. O'Brien and several other U.S. bishops have said they expect that document to be released soon.
"I think anyone who has engaged in homosexual activity, or has strong homosexual inclinations, would be best not to apply to a seminary and not to be accepted into a seminary," O'Brien told the independent newspaper. He said that even gays who have been celibate for a decade or more should not be admitted, the Register reported in its Sept. 4-10 edition.

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4-NEWS: WashPost on CA ssm

Washington Post Editorial
California's Solons Lead
Tuesday, September 13, 2005; Page A26 

THE CALIFORNIA General Assembly last week became the first state legislature to allow same-sex marriages. In a close vote, it sent a historic bill to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) that would go a step beyond the state's broad domestic partnership rights. Mr. Schwarzenegger promptly declared that he would veto the bill, so it won't become law. But the legislature's action is an important milestone. While the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court permitted same-sex marriage in that state and legislatures have created civil unions elsewhere, the vote is the first time that a state legislature has acted on its own to create marriage equality.
The importance of the California vote in the politics of same-sex marriage is hard to overstate. After the Massachusetts court ruling, opponents of same-sex marriage decried the court's willingness to make policy on contested social issues. Such questions, they argued, were the rightful province of legislatures, not courts. President Bush even pegged his disgraceful endorsement of a federal constitutional amendment banning gay marriage to the likelihood of "activist judges" depriving the people of democratic choice on the matter. The California legislature's decision gives the lie to the notion that only imperial judges would foist such a social policy on a state.

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5-NEWS: Boston Globe on MA m amendment

GLOBE EDITORIAL
Equal voices
September 13, 2005

THE PROPOSED constitutional amendment banning gay marriage that goes before the Legislature tomorrow faces near-certain defeat. That will be a victory for equality and compassion even if Attorney General Thomas Reilly's recent certification of a harsher alternative proposed for the 2008 ballot makes the political message murkier. Sixteen months and some 6,000 weddings after gay marriage became legal in Massachusetts, we hope the state can simply move on.
The Supreme Judicial Court's 2003 ruling that same-sex couples cannot be denied marriage rights in Massachusetts was a landmark stand for justice. That principle would be strengthened if the Legislature rejected the amendment tomorrow, adding its voice to the SJC ruling. The numbers show that voters reject writing discrimination into the Constitution; recent elections have resulted in a net gain of gay marriage supporters since the first vote on the amendment in 2004.

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6-NEWS: Dan Savage on his son's homeless mom

September 11, 2005
DJ's Homeless Mommy
By DAN SAVAGE
In NY Times

THERE was no guarantee that doing an open adoption would get us a baby any faster than doing a closed or foreign adoption. In fact, our agency warned us that, as a gay male couple, we might be in for a long wait. This point was driven home when both birth mothers who spoke at the two-day open adoption seminar we were required to attend said that finding "good, Christian homes" for their babies was their first concern.
But we decided to go ahead and try to do an open adoption anyway. If we became parents, we wanted our child's biological parents to be a part of his life.
As it turns out we didn't have to wait long. A few weeks after our paperwork was done, we got a call from the agency. A 19-year-old homeless street kid - homeless by choice and seven months pregnant by accident - had selected us from the agency's pool of screened parent wannabes. The day we met her the agency suggested all three of us go out for lunch - well, four of us if you count Wish, her German shepherd, five if you count the baby she was carrying.

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