Wedding boutique for gay men

Posted on July 31, 2007
Filed Under Fashion | Leave a Comment

Wedding shop for gay menWith same-sex marriage now legal in countries like Belgium, Spain, the Netherlands, Canada and South Africa, and many more countries accepting civil unions, domestic partnerships or registered partnerships, a whole new bridal industry is springing up to cater to the demands and wishes of gay and lesbian couples.

Spotted in Barcelona: BY, Europe’s first wedding shop for gay men. The venture was conceived as “an image atelier for fashion conscious individuals in search of alternatives to the conventional groom and ceremony suits.” Suits are tailor-made in Spanish workshops and priced from EUR 1,500–6,000. For an extra personal touch, they can be lined with fabric printed with a couple’s monogram, a photograph or a poem. Designers working for the boutique include Delgado Buil, Ion Fix, Juanjo Oliva, Locking Shocking and Helena Rohner. Besides clothes, BY also sells wedding rings and other accessories.

Smart concept to start up in cities with large gay communities, wherever same-sex marriage is legal. And don’t forget lesbian nuptials! For more examples of companies working to reap ‘pink profits’ check out our sister site trendwatching.com’s latest briefing.

Website: http://www.bybcn.es/
Contact: info@bybcn.com

Source: Springwise

Gay-friendly candidate in final vote for French President

Posted on April 23, 2007
Filed Under France | Leave a Comment

The first round of the elections for President of France has narrowed the field down to gay-friendly Segolene Royal and frontrunner Nicolas Sarkozy.

The 53-year-old Ms Royal is the socialist party candidate for the presidency and would become France’s first woman president if elected. Her manifesto demands equal rights for same-sex couples, paving the way for future anti-discrimination legislation should the French population elect her.

In 2000, as the Minister of the Family and Children, Ms Royal spoke out against anti-gay bullying in schools. “School must be a place of tolerance, of welcome. Too many young people face teasing, social exclusion because of their sexual orientation. Some consider drugs, suicide attempts. It is time to stand up to this hostility shown towards homosexuality,” she said.

Royal has indicated that she is in favour of same-sex couples adopting.
In 2002, Ms Royal introduced a law that gave legal recognition to families with same-sex parents.

Speaking to the LGBT publication Tetu in 2006, she said she is in favour of same-sex marriage, something which is currently banned under President Jacques Chirac’s conservative ruling UMP party.

“Opening up marriage to same-sex couples is needed in the name of equality, visibility and respect. It is essential that everybody has equal rights and dignities and the chance to express themselves freely,” she said.

In contrast, Nicholas Sarkozy, the candidate for the UMP, said in a TV debate earlier this year that he is opposed to any form of gay marriage.

Speaking to La Liberation newspaper earlier this month Mr Sarkozy, who was until last month the French Interior Minister, criticised the Roman Catholic church’s attitude towards gays.

“I was born heterosexual. I have never questioned myself about the choice of my sexuality. That is why the church’s position, which consists of saying “Homosexuality is a sin,” is shocking,” he told the newspaper.

“One doesn’t choose one’s identity. One has the identity that one has.”

Mr Sarkozy also shared his opinions on the nature of sexuality: “Not everything depends on nurture, but that part could be nature. In what proportion? I am not a scientist.

Despite his criticism of the Roman Catholic church, Mr Sarkozy has made clear his own opposition to gay marriage. He has promised new adoption rights for gay couples and improved financial arrangements.

Polling carried out in June 2006 suggests that the French population might support Royal’s policies on gay rights.

The Ipsos survey shows that 62% support gay marriage, while 37% were opposed.
When asked whether same-sex couples should be allowed to adopt children, the survey found more people to be in opposition (55%) than in support (44%).

Source: Pink News UK

Senior same-sex couples navigate system that doesn’t recognize them

Posted on April 22, 2007
Filed Under New Hampshire | Leave a Comment

Heritage Heights residents Bill Twibill and Casper Kranenburg say they plan to join in a civil union if New Hampshire law allows it.

After 25 years together, Bill Twibill and Casper Kranenburg are linked by love, mutual respect and an inch-thick stack of documents that form a fragile facsimile of marriage they hope will allow them to care for each other as they age.

Without these papers, one cannot visit the other in the hospital, consult on his medical treatment, handle his finances or perform other chores that become necessary as couples grow old. Nor could one man claim the other’s body, inherit his property or arrange his funeral when he dies.

Should New Hampshire recognize same-sex civil unions, as it now seems poised to do, Twibill’s fears would dissipate. He and many of his peers say they would worry less that a distant relative or unsympathetic judge might unravel their end-of-life plans. Many legal challenges, such as estate planning, health-care decision making and inheritance, would be simplified, but aging gay men and lesbians say that civil unions will do little to relieve other complications they expect to encounter as they grow old.

“I don’t want to put a damper on how great civil unions will be,” said Pat McGrath, a Manchester attorney who helps same-sex couples plan their retirements. “They need to talk to someone about how civil unions are going to come into the mix.”

“We’re not to that age yet, but when we get there, what will we have to worry about?” said Dawn Touzin, who’s in her 50s. “It’s all so unknown. We could have been together for a lot of years, but you reach that place and, at least from a federal prospective, you’re on your own.”

Her partner of eight years, Ellen McCahon, agrees: “You have to figure out trusts that are more creative,” she said. “You don’t know what your legal options are, so you have to pay someone to walk you through. It just makes it a lot more complicated. It’s a whole other train of thought.”

State-granted unions have no bearing on federal law, so partners will still be considered single when it comes to taxes, social security benefits and Medicare. Couples continue to worry, too, about late-life discrimination in nursing homes and retirement communities, and wonder what civil unions will mean for private pensions or asset tests to qualify for government-subsidized elder care.

Whatever the effects of civil unions in New Hampshire, there will likely be many opportunities to apply the rights - and restrictions - they contain to an aging population. New Hampshire is already the sixth-oldest state in the nation and is becoming a destination for many recent retirees, including baby boomers who are more open with their sexuality, and sexual orientations, than the generations that came before.

Among the transplants is Rep. Ed Butler, a Hart’s Location Democrat who just celebrated 29 years with his partner, Les Schoof. Butler, 57, and Schoof, 55, left jobs in New York in 1993 and used most of their retirement savings to buy a North Country inn. They’ve written and rewritten their wills, discussed their wishes with their families, and encountered widespread acceptance of their relationship among neighbors, guests and strangers. But they worry about couples who aren’t as lucky.

“With or without civil unions, retirement options would become available to people who have money to invest,” Butler said “One of the things that I think civil unions are going to begin to achieve is safety, protection, coverage for people who don’t necessarily have a lot of money, who don’t necessarily have a big retirement plan.”

Many gay and lesbian couples think more about retirement than their heterosexual peers, saying they can count on fewer social, economic and legal guarantees. It’s more likely for a relative to contest a will or interfere with funeral arrangements after one partner dies, so couples lay out their wishes in intricate documents. Some couples start saving for retirement earlier too, funneling additional money into private investment accounts because survivors benefits don’t transfer between partners.

“Casper can’t get my social security benefits,” said Twibill. “He can’t get anything from the federal government, but we pay all the taxes.” Twibill and Kranenburg have no immediate family, but they still took steps to ensure the surviving man will inherit the other’s property, such as excluding distant relatives by name in their wills.

Every few years, the men review and re-sign their wills to make it clear that their wishes remain the same. “It’s an ongoing financial thing,” said Twibill. “It’s wrong. We’ve been together 25 years, and we still have to do this.”

Children are an important factor too. Older same-sex couples are less likely to have them because of social norms during their younger years. That means thinking about who will care for them when they’re old. Most of the couples we know our age aren’t going to have children, so we talk about how we can take care of each other.”

While civil unions will be an important legal step for same-sex couples, many gay men and lesbians worry that they’ll still face discrimination in nursing homes and retirement communities. Married couples, for instance, are guaranteed rooms together, but that’s not the case for same-sex couples.

Source: Concord Monitor

The Rasta view on homosexuality?

Posted on April 22, 2007
Filed Under Jamaica | Leave a Comment

He is 60 years of age, an elder in a particular Rasta community where the brethren are, as he says, ‘constantly seeking to understand themselves in the ‘present dispensation’, which he considers to be, less introspective and more in the need to define a strategy for social and economic survival in a land that has been hostile to Rasta even up to the present time.

He is university educated and is considered an authority on certain aspects of our cultural heritage especially our music and politics. Years ago he was a contemporary of some of those who now tread haughtily through the halls of political power. He was one of them then when they would meet to smoke herb as sacrament and to engage in forums of social and political thought.

Years ago when they opted for closer engagement with the political process he chose the lesser lights, preferring to confine his teaching to the community, the children and especially the young men of the present generation who seem to be going nowhere fast.

Today he remains physically lean as he always was, while his political friends of the past have been oiled and fattened by the juicy hog of politics. He sought me out because he had a burning desire to present a Rasta view on homosexuality especially in light of the recent mob actions (Half-Way-Tree and Montego Bay) against men said to be ‘openly homosexual’.

“For obvious reasons, I do not want my name to be published because our society is a small, closed one where ignorance abounds and there are always aplenty, those who would want to victimise some of us who have too strong a viewpoint on a subject as touchy as male/male sexual pairing,” he said.

For the purpose of this column I will call him Soul Rebel. Read more….

Source: The Jamaica Observer

Disagreement on same-sex relations riles Lutheran body

Posted on April 17, 2007
Filed Under Sweden | Leave a Comment

Blessings for people living in same-sex relationships triggered heated debate at a meeting last month of the main governing body of the Lutheran World Federation in the southern Swedish city of Lund.

Divisions that have torn apart the Anglican Communion and created discord in other Christian denominations received an airing March 22, but no action was taken.

As with the divisions among Anglicans, Lutheran churches in the global North tend to be more accepting of same-gender partnerships, and most of the opposition comes from the global South, including African countries.

The federation, marking its 60th anniversary, has not taken a position on the issues. LWF general secretary Ishmael Noko urged members to listen to one another in tolerance. A lack of time in the Lund meeting meant that proposed guidelines for discussing human sexuality did not succeed in getting full acceptance.

In order not to focus on the issues of sexuality alone, the federation’s council appointed a task force in September 2004 to review research from member churches and “to propose guidelines and processes for dialogue by which respectful discussion can be pursued” on the three-part topic of “marriage, family and human sexuality.”

LWF president Mark Hanson, who is also presiding bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, chaired the debate. Hanson said the report would be raised again during a March 20-27 LWF council meeting and discussed in subsequent regional meetings.

The day before the debate, the Church of Sweden announced that matrimony should be reserved for heterosexual couples, but that the church would give blessings to same-sex couples in committed, faithful relationships. In doing so the church went against a recommendation by a Swedish government commission that proposed changing the law in order to accept both same-sex and heterosexual relationships within the legal framework of marriage.

Bishop Munib Younan, leader of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Jordan and the Holy Land, hinted that decisions such as the one by the Swedish church would make life difficult for Christian leaders in the Middle East.

“We need to have more debate on what we mean by the family,” said Younan. He said the issue could cause an ecumenical crisis.

Lutheran leaders heard church representatives, especially from Africa, speak out strongly about the dangers of giving blessings to people in same-sex relationships. “If God had wanted people from the same sex to have relationships he would have created Adam and Adam, not Adam and Eve,” said Satou Marthe, a woman delegate from Cameroon.

One European dissenting on same-sex unions was Archbishop Janis Vanags of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Latvia.

“Our church does not see it as helpful when homosexuality is discussed with family and marriage,” Vanags said. His church believes that homosexuality is a sin, he said, and that people should repent of their sins and seek forgiveness, just as Martin Luther advised.

African participants congratulated the Latvian archbishop after his speech for his forthrightness.

Source: Christian Century

Anglicans to meet on same-sex issues

Posted on April 16, 2007
Filed Under Ontario | Leave a Comment

Archbishop of CanterburyThe archbishop of Canterbury broke weeks of silence in Toronto this morning, announcing that he will meet in September with the U.S. Episcopal Church on the eve of the American branch of Anglicanism being expelled from the international communion over gay rights.

Williams has been under pressure to meet with the American church since last month, when U.S. bishops voted to support same sex marriage blessings and gay clergy, despite a Sept. 30 deadline to reverse the policies or face expulsion from the international communion.

The bishops also issued an urgent plea to meet with them. They are to meet again in New Orleans from Sept 20 to 25.

Canadian Anglicans face the possibility of sanctions similar to those imposed on the U.S. church when it decides in June whether to allow same sex marriage blessings.

Williams urged Canadian church leaders to consider the future of the international communion when they cast their ballots.

The church has been pushed to the brink of schism over gay rights, with conservative bishops, mostly from Africa, pitted against the largely liberal church leadership in developed countries. Williams said it has been his job as head of the church to keep all sides at the table.

Source: Toronto Star

Gay-marriage advocates switch tactics

Posted on April 16, 2007
Filed Under USA | Leave a Comment

Any day now, the Maryland Supreme Court may decide whether same-sex couples have a right to marry.

After Massachusetts’ highest court extended that right in 2003, many lawyers expected a cascade of lawsuits in other states. But resistance from conservative legal groups and the public has been stiffer than expected, forcing advocates to abandon the courts and settle for civil unions — at least for now.

A stepping stone to marriage
Maria and Lidia Agramonte-Gomez live with a 90-pound dog and five cats in a house perched at the top of a hill in New Britain, Conn. They met seven years ago and have lived together for six. On an April evening, they sat around eating flan for dinner and talking about Oct. 1, 2005. On that crisp New England day, Connecticut offered civil-union licenses for the first time in its history. Maria and Lidia rushed to the statehouse.

“We got up early, because I was concerned there would be a lot of people, and I didn’t want to spend the whole day there,” Maria recalled. “But there were only 26 people, so we ended up being first.”

The civil union was historic, but Lidia saw it as a necessary stepping stone to marriage.

“Because we can go back and we can say to people, ‘We have tried this civil union, this new social construct. And it isn’t equal,’” Lidia said. “If we had never tried it, then the argument on the other side, I think, would have been, ‘How do you know it doesn’t work, if you haven’t given it a chance?’”

Now the two women, along with other couples, are lobbying for Connecticut to take the next step: to enact a same-sex marriage bill. The Agramonte-Gomezes recently invited a state senator to their house, to meet with straight and gay folks about why they support same-sex marriage. Maria testified in March before the state legislature’s Judiciary Committee, a 12-hour marathon of testimonies for and against gay marriage. If the committee decides to approve a marriage bill, it will go before the full legislature.

Maria and Lidia embody the shifting strategy of advocates for same-sex marriage. Advocates long ago decided that it was too risky to allow these cases to go before federal courts, since they believe the current U.S. Supreme Court would not be favorably disposed toward this new type of marriage. But they have also shifted away from fighting in state courts. Instead, they’re wooing state lawmakers.

“We actually have seen a record number of states this year in which bills were introduced to end gay couples’ exclusion from marriage,” says Evan Wolfson of Freedom to Marry. “Some of them will move forward. Some of them may move forward slowly over a period of a few years. And some of them will see a nonlinear progress, where they may move toward marriage, but through other measures, such as partnership or civil union, on the way to marriage equality. But the conversation has begun, and it’s begun at the right level.”

Recently California, Illinois, New Jersey, New Mexico and Washington state have considered changing state laws prohibiting same-sex recognition. In New Hampshire, the state House has approved a civil-union bill, and the Senate is expected to pass it Thursday. Vermont already has civil unions, and New Jersey — faced with a command from the state’s highest court to strike down discrimination — passed a civil union law rather than a marriage law. Read more….

Source: NPR

Canadian activist urges Nova Scotia churches to allow same-sex marriage

Posted on April 13, 2007
Filed Under Canada, Nova Scotia | Leave a Comment

Canadian gay rights activist Gerard Veldhoven is calling for churches in Amherst, Nova Scotia, to allow same-sex marriages. Veldhoven says that now that civil marriage is legal, religious institutions should follow suit, reports the Amherst Daily News.

“The fact civil marriage ceremonies have now been legal in the whole of Canada for some time now, I believe it to be fair and justified that same-sex couples are afforded the opportunity to marry in their churches,” Veldhoven told the local paper.

He added that it is ironic that the United Church of Canada was a driving force in allowing same-sex couples to marry but that Trinity-St. Stephen’s United in Amherst prohibits such ceremonies. Presently, no churches in the town allow same-sex marriages to take place on their grounds.

“It’s not something that’s within our control,” the Reverend Byron Corkum with Amherst First Baptist told the Daily News. “It’s a convention policy, and we have to follow it to remain as part of the convention.”

Veldhoven married his partner, Norman Carter, in 2004 in what was believed to be the first legal same-sex union in Nova Scotia.

Source: The Advocate
 

Blankenhorn’s logic doesn’t hang together

Posted on April 12, 2007
Filed Under Michigan | Leave a Comment

Opposition to homosexuality has long been marked by bad science. In the past, that usually meant bad psychology or even bad physiology. Today, the more common problem is bad social science, usually involving cherry-picked data about alarming social trends followed by breathtaking leaps of logic connecting these trends to same-sex marriage.

David Blankenhorn positions himself as an exception. In his new book “The Future of Marriage,” and in a recent Weekly Standard article entitled “Defining Marriage Down … Is No Way to Save It,” Blankenhorn makes the familiar argument that supporting same-sex marriage weakens marriage as a valuable social institution. But he claims to do so in way that avoids some of the simplistic analyses common in the debate, including those made by his conservative allies.

In particular, Blankenhorn criticizes Stanley Kurtz’s argument that same-sex marriage in the Netherlands and Scandinavia has caused the erosion of traditional marriage there. Blankenhorn rightly recognizes Kurtz’s causal claims to be unsupported: “Neither Kurtz nor anyone else can scientifically prove that allowing gay marriage causes the institution of marriage to get weaker,” Blankenhorn writes. “Correlation does not imply causation.” This is a refreshing concession.

But having made that concession, Blankenhorn proceeds as if it makes no difference: “Scholars and commentators have expended much effort trying in vain to wring proof of causation from the data, all the while ignoring the meaning of some simple correlations that the numbers do indubitably show.” But what can these correlations mean, if not that same-sex marriage is causally responsible for the alleged problems? What do the numbers “indubitably show”? Blankenhorn’s answer provides a textbook example of a circular argument:

“Certain trends in values and attitudes tend to cluster with each other and with certain trends in behavior … . The legal endorsement of gay marriage occurs where the belief prevails that marriage itself should be redefined as a private personal relationship. And all of these marriage-weakening attitudes and behaviors are linked. Around the world, the surveys show, these things go together. ”

In other words, what the correlations show is that these things are correlated. Not very helpful.

From there, Blankenhorn argues that if things “go together,” opposition to one is good reason for opposition to all. He attempts to illustrate by analogy:

“Find some teenagers who smoke, and you can confidently predict that they are more likely to drink than their nonsmoking peers. Why? Because teen smoking and drinking tend to hang together.” So if you oppose teenage drinking, you ought to oppose teenage smoking, because of the correlation between the two. In a similar way, if you oppose nonmarital cohabitation, single-parent parenting, or other “marriage-weakening behaviors,” you ought to oppose same-sex marriage, since they, too, “tend to hang together.” Read more….

Source: Pride Source

This is breathtakingly bad logic. The analogy sounds initially plausible because teen drinking and teen smoking are both bad things. But the things that correlate with bad things are not necessarily bad. Find some teenagers who have tried cocaine, and you can confidently predict that they are more likely to have gone to top-notch public schools than their non-cocaine-using peers. It’s not because superior education causes cocaine use. It’s because cocaine is an expensive drug, and expensive drugs tend to show up in affluent communities, which tend to have better public schools than their poor counterparts. Yet it would be ridiculous to conclude that, if you oppose teen cocaine use, you ought to oppose top-notch public education.

The whole point of noting that “correlation does not equal cause” is to acknowledge that things that “tend to hang together” are not necessarily mutually reinforcing. They are sometimes both the result of third-party causes, and even more often the result of a complex web of causes that we haven’t quite figured out yet. In any case, when babies correlate with dirty bathwater, we don’t take that as a reason for throwing out babies.

Which brings me to another significant flaw in Blankenhorn’s analysis. Even if we grant that support for same-sex marriage correlates with negative factors such as higher divorce rates, it also seems to correlate with positive factors such as higher education, greater support for religious freedom, and greater respect for women’s rights. On Blankenhorn’s logic, we ought to oppose those things as well, since they “tend to hang together” with the negative trends.

I don’t often find myself agreeing with Stanley Kurtz. But at least he seems to understand that, without the causal connections, the “negative marriage trends” argument gets no traction.
 

Gay bishop supports same-sex unions in U.S.

Posted on April 12, 2007
Filed Under United Kingdom | Leave a Comment

Gene Robinson, the Episcopal Church’s sole openly gay bishop, added his voice to New Hampshire’s civil unions debate, saying legalising same-sex unions doesn’t threaten religion or families.

Robinson testified at a state senate hearing on civil unions, which passed the house last week. He said he went to the legislature as a religious leader and a New Hampshire citizen seeking equality for himself and his partner of nearly 20 years.

Church, family, and the state collided Tuesday under the statehouse dome as the senate took a first look at the bill, which if passed would make New Hampshire the fourth state to allow gay and lesbian couples to enter civil unions. Canada and Massachusetts allow same-sex marriage.

The Roman Catholic diocese of Manchester asked the senate judiciary committee to reserve marriage for men and women. “No other form of relationship between persons can be considered equivalent to a natural relationship between a man and a woman out of whose love it is possible for children to be born,” said Diane Murphy Quinlan, chancellor of the diocese. “Marriage is not simply a matter of emotion between two people or a lifestyle choice.”

Robinson’s election in 2003 as the first openly gay bishop sparked international fallout in the worldwide Anglican Communion to which the U.S. Episcopal Church belongs.
Anglican leaders have since asked the U.S. denomination to stop ordaining more gay bishops and temporarily refrain from blessing same-sex unions. He referred to none of that Tuesday.

More than 200 people signed up to speak against civil unions, 94 in favour—the committee adjourned after four hours without hearing everyone.

Esther Poulin, of Bedford, used part of her time to reading the story of Adam and Eve from the book of Genesis. God created Eve as a helpmate to Adam, said Poulin, 50. “For us to rewrite God’s law is an abomination,” she said.

Eric Knutsen, a church worker and waiter from Concord, worried about the human harvest. “When a man has a sexual relationship with a woman, what he is doing is he’s sowing a seed,” he said. “We can call all sorts of things families, but when a man and a man get together and sow their seed among another—have sex, sow a seed—it does not bear any fruit.”

State senator Martha Fuller Clark said civil unions should pass so her sons, gay and straight, could have the same chance at happiness.

His voice breaking, former state senator Gary Francoeur asked lawmakers to be “righteous” and vote down civil unions, even though he has a lesbian daughter. “My heart aches today as I watch the consequences of the sin in their lives,” he said of his children. He said his daughter “knows the law of the land yet she chooses to live a homosexual lifestyle.”

The committee is expected to make its decision on civil unions Thursday. Senate president Sylvia Larsen, a Democrat from Concord, said she’s optimistic it will pass the full senate.

Governor John Lynch remains the wild card. Lynch is against marriage equality but says he’s still making up his mind about civil unions. He supports expanding state employee health benefits to cover same-sex partners. If the bill reaches his desk, Lynch can sign it, allow it to become law without his signature, or veto it.

Source: Gay.com 

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