TOP6NEWS - Date 9.16.05

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1-NEWS: Proposed Puerto Rican code may lead to ssm
2-NEWS: NY unions recognize ss union
3-NEWS: Study: More women experimenting with bisexuality
4-NEWS: Website w/ MA m amendment signers will continue
5-OP-ED: Editorial boards spinning MA vote as pro ssm
6-FEATURE: Profile of gay church in Brooklyn, NY
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1-NEWS: Proposed Puerto Rican code may lead to ssm

New proposed Civil Code may lead to marriage equality recognition in Puerto Rico
EVA LLORENS VELEZ
September 14, 2005
The San Juan Star
If a proposed Civil Code revision is approved by lawmakers and signed into law by the governor, the Puerto Rico government will be required to recognize out-of-state marriages of same-sex couples. The revision would repeal a 1999 law that currently allows the government to deny recognition of marriages between couples of the same gender. The clause follows new scientific trends in private international law.
Civil Code would OK some gay marriages
Proposed Civil Code overhaul would scratch law allowing government to refuse recognition
The Puerto Rico government will be required to recognize some gay marriages if a proposed Civil Code revision is approved by lawmakers and signed into law by the governor.

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2-NEWS: NY unions recognize ss union

Union to recognize local lesbian couple
BY INDRANI SEN
Newsday STAFF WRITER
September 16, 2005

In a decision gay rights advocates say is a first in New York, a lesbian couple from Bohemia has gained recognition for their Canadian marriage from a chapter of the Teamsters Union, which has extended health coverage to the retired employee's partner of 25 years.
The welfare fund of Teamsters Local 295/Local 851, which represents workers at Kennedy Airport, granted spousal rights to Marie Sardone, 59, who married Dolores Damone, 60, in Toronto in April. It's the first union in the state to recognize same-sex marriages performed in jurisdictions where they are legal, according to gay advocacy groups. The Teamsters are following the example of several other institutions, however, including the New York City and state retirement systems and several private companies.
When people think of unions, they tend to think of them being somewhat socially conservative," said Alan Van Capelle, executive director of the Empire State Pride Agenda, a civil rights group dealing with gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender issues. "The Teamsters actually took an incredibly progressive step.

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3-NEWS: Study: More women experimenting with bisexuality

More women experimenting with bisexuality
Survey: Females in late teens and 20s report increasing same-sex contact
The Associated Press
Updated: 6:18 p.m. ET Sept. 15, 2005

More women — particularly those in their late teens and 20s — are experimenting with bisexuality or at least feel more comfortable reporting same-sex encounters, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The survey, released Thursday by the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics, found that 11.5 percent of women, ages 18 to 44, said they’ve had at least one sexual experience with another women in their lifetimes, compared with about 4 percent of women, ages 18 to 59, who said the same in a comparable survey a decade earlier.
For women in their late teens and 20s, the percentage rose to 14 percent in the more recent survey. About 6 percent of men in their teens and 20s said they’d had at least one same-sex encounter.

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4-NEWS: Website w/ MA m amendment signers will continue

Creator of controversial Web site vows to continue
Says he's well within his rights to post names
By Laura Kiritsy
Bay Windows
Published: Thursday, September 15, 2005

Despite a hail of criticism from activists on either side of the marriage issue and hits from left- and right-leaning media outlets, the folks at KnowThyNeighbor.org are standing by their plan to publicize the names and addresses of those who sign a petition to put a same-sex marriage ban on the 2008 ballot.
"We know what we're doing is right. This is public access to public information and it's not about intimidation," said Tom Lang, one of the directors of KnowThyNeighbor, dismissing criticism from both the Massachusetts Family Institute (MFI), the organization sponsoring the petition drive, and a Boston Herald editorial stating that the site's aim is to scare people away from signing the petition. Lang said the purpose of the site, which he founded with co-director and Web master Aaron Toleos, is to foster dialogue about the amendment. Open communication, he said, is "part of the democratic process of the initiative petition process."

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5-NEWS: Editorial boards spinning MA vote as pro ssm

Next, Massachusetts
Washington Post Editorial
Friday, September 16, 2005; Page A30
FOR THE SECOND time in as many weeks, a state legislature has bucked the ugly trend of writing discrimination against gays into state law. Last week, the California Assembly voted to allow same-sex marriage. This week, lawmakers in Massachusetts decisively rejected a proposed constitutional amendment to overturn the state's Supreme Judicial Court decision acknowledging gay marriage rights. The lopsided vote, 157 to 39, provides a kind of backhanded legislative validation of the court's ruling, which had been much derided for usurping the legislative function. Lawmakers have not voted to create same-sex-marriage rights, but they have decided not to take them away. The vote shows that as people grow used to gay marriages, which have been taking place in Massachusetts for more than a year, their discomfort -- and the political impetus for banning them -- diminishes.

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6-NEWS: Profile of gay church in Brooklyn, NY

Serving Gays Who Serve God
By ANDY NEWMAN NY Times
Published: September 16, 2005

This spring, Brenda Oliver, depressed and desperate for spiritual sustenance, visited the church near her home in Bushwick, Brooklyn. She lasted until the minister started talking about the men of Sodom who demanded that Lot let them have sex with his houseguests.
He looked straight at Ms. Oliver, a sturdy, dreadlocked woman dressed in her customary long pants and black work boots.
"The preacher said that if a bunch of gays went to his house, he'd start shooting and killing them," recalled Ms. Oliver, who is a lesbian. She walked outside, leaned on the church gate and cried.
Months later, on a humid Sunday morning, as an organ's sweet gospel music drifted out onto a grim stretch of Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn from a different kind of church, called Unity Fellowship, Ms. Oliver sat in her van, nervously eating a breakfast of bacon and grits. In a few minutes, she would go inside to be baptized.

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