TOP6NEWS - Date 9.20.05

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1-NEWS: AL judge rescinds TG m license
2-NEWS: HRC report: Companies becoming more gay friendly
3-NEWS: Spanish Conservative party takes ssm to court
4-NEWS: Nigerian Anglicans break with Church of England
5-NEWS: Amar, Leib: Schwarzenegger should sign ssm bill, delay it and send it to ballot box
6-NEWS: P. Drexler: Is ssm opposition about fear of nontraditional parenting?
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1-NEWS:  AL judge rescinds TG m license

Changed Her Name But Judge Rescinds Lesbian's Marriage
by 365Gay.com Newscenter Staff
Posted: September 19, 2005  9:00 pm ET
Montgomery, Alabama) A suburban Montgomery judge has invalidated the marriage of a couple he says misled him.
In December 2003 Elmore County Probate judge Jimmy Stubbs issued a marriage license to Joseph Cutcher and Patricia Hammon.
But, following an anonymous telephone tip last week Stubbs discovered that Cutcher was a woman.
Born Juanita Cutcher she legally changed her name to Joseph two years earlier.
"To me, they just falsified to the court, or to this office, what they [were] doing." Stubbs told WSFA television.

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2-NEWS: HRC report: Companies becoming more gay friendly

Study: Gay tolerance grows at work
Group says review of 402 large U.S. companies finds that more have tolerant policies than in past.
September 20, 2005: 7:53 AM EDT
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - More large U.S. companies have fair-minded policies toward gays than ever before, continuing a trend that began in the 1990s, a gay rights group said Tuesday.
Gay-inclusive policies, once concentrated in financial and high-tech firms on the east and west coasts, are permeating other industries including defense, chemicals, and oil and gas, the Washington-based Human Rights Campaign Foundation said.
The foundation released its fourth annual Corporate Equality Index, grading 402 U.S. companies with at least 500 employees on their treatment of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender workers.
This year 101 companies got a perfect score, close to doubling last year's group of 56 companies that received 100 percent. The top-ranked companies ranged from Dow Chemical Co. and Chevron Corp. to bankrupt building materials company Owens Corning and Walgreen Co., the nation's largest drugstore chain.

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3-NEWS: Spanish Conservative party takes ssm to court

Popular Party challenge gay marriage law in court
20 September 2005
Expatica

MADRID — Spain's main opposition conservatives are preparing to challenge in court the constitutionality of a law passed in June authorizing same-sex marriage.
The deputy leader of the Popular Party, Angel Acebes, said the organization's lawyers are currently drafting the motion they plan to present to the Constitutional Court in an effort to have the law struck down.
His announcement came 24 hours after various homosexual groups selected PP-governed Madrid as the site of the 2007 European Gay Pride parade.
On 30 June, the Spanish Parliament voted 187-147 for a measure submitted by the ruling Socialists to give same-sex couples the right to marry and adopt children.

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4-NEWS: Nigerian Anglicans break with Church of England

Anglicans face specter of schism over gay rights
By Paul Majendie  |  September 20, 2005

LONDON (Reuters) - Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams faces a recurring nightmare trying to stop Anglican liberals and conservatives heading for schism over the increasingly divisive issue of gay rights.
"That is why Rowan Williams is looking so haggard nowadays," Church Times editor Paul Handley said on Tuesday as the spiritual leader of 77 million Anglicans worldwide fought to keep the church united.
Two years of deepening divisions were sparked by the ordination of a gay bishop in the United States and the blessing of same sex marriages in Canada.
Now the Church of Nigeria, the most vocal critic of liberal Anglicans in Western churches, has deleted all reference to Canterbury, the mother church of the Anglican communion, from its constitution.

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5-NEWS: Amar, Leib: Schwarzenegger should sign ssm bill, delay it and send it to ballot box

A third option on gay marriage
Vikram David Amar, Ethan J. Leib
Tuesday, September 20, 2005
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has asserted that "respect for the will of the people" compels him to veto the Legislature's bill recognizing same-sex marriage for in-state residents.
The governor's reference to "the people" is apparently to Proposition 22, passed by California voters in 2000 comprising this single sentence: "Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California." Because of this initiative, Schwarzenegger believes the Legislature's measure is foreclosed. Although Schwarzenegger has the power to veto the bill, his claim that respect for the "will of the people" requires him to reject it is overstated.

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6-NEWS: P. Drexler: Is ssm opposition about fear of nontraditional parenting?

CHANGING ATTITUDES ABOUT FAMILIES
Is fear of same-sex marriage fear of nontraditional parenting?
Peggy Drexler
Tuesday, September 20, 2005

It's no surprise that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is the latest political headliner to find himself in the hot seat over same-sex marriage. Last year, he told Jay Leno that he thinks such marriages are fine, but let the people decide. Now, their elected leaders have done so -- yet the governor promises to veto the bill. At the same time, deep fears and widely held beliefs remain persistent when it comes to people of the same sex forming families.
A politician trying to have it both ways is nothing new. What's new (and surprising to many people) is what we're learning about the actual families that lesbian and gay couples are creating: They work remarkably well for children. To the extent that public reluctance to fully embrace same-sex marriage is based on a concern for the children of such relationships, a growing body of research should help allay those fears. In fact, two-mom and two-dad families are showing that they can raise children as well as heterosexual couples can. Marginalizing them does not serve their children.

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