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UT: Lawmakers Put Off Anti Discrimination Legislation for a Year

Sunday, January 31st, 2010

Utah lawmakers will not consider a law that would ban discrimination against gay men and lesbians in the workplace and in housing, and will instead spend the next year studying the issue, key lawmakers said Friday. In exchange, opponents of gay-rights legislation will drop any effort to prevent local governments from passing their own nondiscrimination laws this legislative session.

Gay-rights advocates had hoped to build on recent momentum created by the Salt Lake City Council, which passed nondiscrimination ordinances last year. Those ordinances passed after The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints said it would support the measures.

In Utah, few law changes occur if the church disapproves. More than 80 percent of state lawmakers are Mormon, including Gov. Gary Herbert, a Republican.

Full Story from the NY Times
Click here for gay marriage resources.
To subscribe to this blog, use the rss feed on the right, or use the form at right to join our email list. You can also email us at info@purpleunions.com. Or find us on Facebook – just search for Gay Marriage Watch (you’ll see our b/w wedding pic overlooking the Ferry Building and Bay Bridge in SF). We’re also tweeting daily at http://www.twitter.com/gaymarriagewatc.

Posted in anti discrimination, delay, gay rights, legislature, Mormon Church, ut, utah | No Responses »

Guam: Civil Union Bill Debate Delayed As Catholic Church Prepares Attack

Tuesday, January 26th, 2010

The Catholic Church in Guam has submitted a petition opposing plans to legalise same-sex civil unions in the US territory. The controversial Bill 185 on civil unions was due to be discussed this week, but has been delayed again until next month, giving the church more time to garner support for their argument that legalising gay unions will promote homosexuality.

Presenter: Corinne Podger
Speakers: Benjamin Cruz, Guam Senator; Deacon Jeff Barcinas, Spokesman for Guam’s Catholic Archbishop

PODGER: Bill 185 aims to give people in committed same-sex relationships the right to enter into civil unions, thereby enjoying the same responsibilities, rights benefits and protections as marriage. Guam Senator Benjamin Cruz, who tabled the proposed legislation late last year, says it’s unfair to deny homosexual citizens in long-term relationships the same rights as their heterosexual counterparts.

CRUZ: It is a civil rights issue. You’re denying individuals the right to unions that they should be able to get into. But more importantly you’re denying them the equal protection of the law. A professor at the university who, like 100 other professors at the university, paid his bi-weekly dues for retirement; when he retires his significant other will not be able to receive the retirement survivor benefits after he dies. But one of his other fellow professors could marry some 18-year-old girl that he meets online from some foreign country and, after one year, die and she would for the rest of her life be able to receive the benefits.

Full Story from Radio Australia
Click here for gay marriage resources.
To subscribe to this blog, use the rss feed on the right, or use the form at right to join our email list. You can also email us at info@purpleunions.com. Or find us on Facebook – just search for Gay Marriage Watch (you’ll see our b/w wedding pic overlooking the Ferry Building and Bay Bridge in SF). We’re also tweeting daily at http://www.twitter.com/gaymarriagewatc.

Posted in catholic church, civil unions bill, debate, delay, guam, objections | No Responses »

IL: Legislature Puts Off Civil Unions Debate 6 Months

Saturday, December 5th, 2009

Gays and lesbians can go ahead and scratch Civil Unions off their holiday wish list this season, as a Nov. 30 deadline for moving on Civil Unions legislation passed with almost no action by the Democratic-controlled Illinois legislature — except to create a new deadline nearly half a year away.

The fact that the deadline was missed comes as no surprise, considering the state legislature has been adjourned for weeks and is not scheduled to meet again until Jan. 12. Still, this is just one more turn in a complex holding pattern the state Democrats have locked this bill into.The Nov. 30 deadline was set near the end of the Spring legislative session. For months prior to that, the state House had sat on HB2234, a Civil Unions bill proposed by Rep. Greg Harris, an openly gay Democrat serving Chicago’s North Side.

Then all the sudden on May 26, there was a political earthquake in California. The California Supreme Court upheld Proposition 8, a controversial ballot initiative that banned gay marriage in the state. Gays and lesbians throughout the nation were stunned, frustrated, even angry. In Chicago’s Lakeview neighborhood, the heart of Chicago’s gay community, protesters gathered on the streets and demanded justice.

Full Story from the Independent Political Report: http://www.independentpoliticalreport.com/2009/12/in-illinois-and-ny-democratic-electeds-put-off-lgbt-rightsagain/

Click here for gay marriage resources in Illinois.

To subscribe to this blog, use the rss feed on the right, or use the form at right to join our email list. You can also email us at info@purpleunions.com. Or find us on Facebook – just search for Gay Marriage Watch (you’ll see our b/w wedding pic overlooking the Ferry Building and Bay Bridge in SF). We’re also tweeting daily at http://www.twitter.com/gaymarriagewatc.

Posted in civil unions, delay, IL, illinois, legislature | No Responses »