The government intends to implement a House of Lords amendment to the Equality Act that would allow churches, synagogues, mosques and other religious buildings to host civil partnership ceremonies should the faith group wish to.

The amendment is entirely permissive, no organisation will be forced to allow gay couples to hold ceremonies there and the equalities minister Lynne Featherstone said that gay couples would not be allowed to sue churches that refuse to hold them.

However, many consider the introduction of religious civil partnerships to be the first step in the introduction of full gay marriage equality. A government consultation on the issue is to begin shortly. The government also privately hope that religious ministers will be allowed to conduct gay marriages in the same way that they officiate at straight marriages.

Dr Williams told a meeting of MPs that while the church welcome gay clergy and allowed them to be in civil partnerships, it would not support moves to equalise gay relationships with marriage or for the couples to hold ceremonies within the Church of England. When challenged by Simon Kirby, the conservative MP for Brighton Kempton, Dr Williams said he would not countenance weakening the church’s teaching on marriage or for its stance to be dictated by ministers.

“I hoped he might be more measured in his response and reflect on the cases for both sides of the argument more evenly, but he was very one sided,” Mr Kirby told the Sunday Telegraph. “Public opinion is moving faster than the Church on this issue and it is increasingly in danger of getting left behind.

“Obviously it is a difficult issue for the Church, but it has many gay men and women who want to be treated the same way as everyone else,” he added.

Giles Fraser, canon chancellor at St Paul’s cathedral, last week criticised the Church of England saying: “Gay relationships are perfectly capable of reflecting the love of God. Which is why the church should respond more imaginatively to the idea of same-sex blessings being celebrated in church.”

A spokesman for Dr Williams said: ” The Church still believes on the basis of Bible and tradition that marriage is between a man and a woman and does not accept that this needs to change.

“Civil partnerships now provide legal securities for same-sex couples, but this does not, in itself, alter what we believe to be unique about marriage.

“The Church of England is opposed to all forms of homophobia and would want to defend the civil liberties of homosexual people, and to welcome them into our churches.”

The nightclub owner, entrepreneur and LGBT rights activist won a seat on Warsaw city council last month.

The Green party member ran on a Social Democrat ticket.

Mr Legierski, who is black, has suffered racism and homophobic but told Gazeta Wyborcza that although his election was a breakthrough for national politics, the residents of Warsaw are more open-minded.

He said: “I can’t compare myself to Harvey Milk, but I’m glad that I am the first openly gay candidate to be elected for a public office in Poland.”

Warsaw hosted Europride earlier in July but Poland has had an uneasy relationship with gay rights over the years.

The country is deeply Catholic and conservative and human rights groups say it has a poor record on gay equality.

Late president Lech Kaczynski, who died in a plane crash in April, had been accused of homophobia on a number of occasions.

Homosexuality is legal in Poland but couples cannot adopt children and there is no legal recognition of their relationships.

If it makes Kristin Chenoweth feel any better, Newsweek is in dire financial straits.

The wee Emmy winner penned an angry comment (one of many, actually) on the weekly’s website Friday, up in arms over an article titled “Straight Jacket,” which argued that gay male actors, such as Glee‘s Jonathan Groff, have a hard time pulling off heterosexual romantic leads.

Chenoweth, who’s currently starring opposite Tony-nominated Sean Hayes on Broadway in the romantic-comedy musical Promises, Promises, and has guest-starred on Glee, called Ramin Setoodeh’s article—which called Hayes’ real-life homosexuality the “big pink elephant in the room”— “horrendously homophobic.”

“From where I stand, on stage, with Hayes, every night—I’ve observed nothing ‘wooden’ or ‘weird’ in his performance, nor have I noticed the seemingly unwieldy presence of a ‘pink elephant’ in the Broadway Theater,” Chenoweth wrote on Newsweek.com.

“I’d normally keep silent on such matters and write such small-minded viewpoints off as perhaps a blip in common sense. But the offense I take to this article, and your decision to publish it, is not really even related to my profession or my work with Hayes or Jonathan Groff (also singled out in the article as too ‘queeny’ to play ‘straight.’)

“This article offends me because I am a human being, a woman and a Christian,” she continued. “For example, there was a time when Jewish actors had to change their names because anti-Semites thought no Jew could convincingly play Gentile. Setoodeh even goes so far as to justify his knee-jerk homophobic reaction to gay actors by accepting and endorsing that ‘as viewers, we are molded by a society obsessed with dissecting sexuality, starting with the locker room torture in junior high school.’ Really? We want to maintain and proliferate the same kind of bullying that makes children cry and in some recent cases have even taken their own lives? That’s so sad, Newsweek!”

She goes on (read her comments in their entirety at here) to defend Hayes and Groff’s acting work, also name-checking How I Met Your Mother womanizer Neil Patrick Harris and Sex and the City‘s Cynthia Nixon as examples of gay actors who play straight quite convincingly.

“No one needs to see a bigoted, factually inaccurate article that tells people who deviate from heterosexual norms that they can’t be open about who they are and still achieve their dreams,” Chenoweth wrote. “I am told on good authority that Mr. Setoodeh is a gay man himself and I would hope, as the author of this article, he would at least understand that. I encourageNewsweek to embrace stories which promote acceptance, love, unity and singing and dancing for all!”

The Pushing Daisies star later alerted her Twitter followers to the cause, writing, “Check it out. I couldn’t stay silent on this one.”

There seemed to be no response from Setoodeh on his Twitter page, though he appears to be an avowed Glee fan, writing on April 26, “Watched new episode of Glee early. Pitch-perfect and totally angsty, just the way I like it.”

Original post: http://uk.eonline.com/uberblog/b180384_kristin_chenoweth_blasts_newsweek_over.html

Baldwin, brother of Alec, Daniel and Billy, is a born again Christian, with a history of drug and alcohol addiction.

During the interview Baldwin is asked how he’d react if one of his daughters became a lesbian, and the other a stripper.

“Jesus or no Jesus, if my kid started working in a strip club, I’d beat her ass,” he says, in a very un-Christian-like fashion. “Now, the other question is interesting and culturally relevant. I have two or three very dear friends who are homosexual and they know I’m born again and we have an understanding that we’re just not going there…”

The journalist writes: “For the next 20 minutes, we have an intense discussion – argument, really – during which Stephen reveals that he’s all for gay men who, through their faith, reject their homosexuality and get married: ‘To turn away from that lifestyle is astonishing.’ Yes, Stephen, it is. And he’s definitely not for gay marriage.”

When the journalist asks about gay marriage, he says: “I believe that the family unit has fundamentally been the most positive thing for society and I don’t believe that any minority has the right to create changes that impact on the majority. That’s really the only issue for me.”

In the past Baldwin has said that gay marriage is not in line with God’s word, and that homosexuality is not normal and should be kept out of the public education system.

In 2008 Stephen’s brother Alec criticised Stephen’s views in an interview with The Advocate, saying: “Well, in the modern political world, people like that – whether or not I’m related to them – only help us raise money. They want to ban gay marriage because those people are incapable of having a biological family – that’s their only argument. You can ban gay marriage, but if you’re going to make it fair, then you have to ban marriage for everybody else who won’t produce children. But they just single out groups of people that they hate.”

Original Source Text:

www.samesame.com.au

Although spokespersons for the Malawi government have stated the couple’s arrest was as much for their own protection as it was for them breaking the law, it would appear that the Draconian views against the LGBT community in the small country haven’t gone unnoticed in other nations.

According to Nyasa Times:

More than 20 members of the Scottish parliament have condemned the arrest of two gay men in Malawi who held a wedding ceremony.

The motion was signed by members of all main parties and called for parliament to condemn the “illegal and homophobic arrests” of Steven Monjeza and Tiwonge Chimbalanga.

The couple are currently on trial and may face up to 14 years in prison if convicted.

The motion was introduced by Dundee West MSP, Joe FitzPatric.

“Malawi is one of several African countries adopting increasingly homophobic attitudes, with Uganda having recently introducing anti-homosexual legislation including the death penalty and other repressive practices being introduced in Gambia,” he said.

“Apart from the human rights violations, and the discriminatory nature of the contraventions, it is likely that these retrograde and illegal moves will considerably set back efforts to combat the massive problem of HIV AIDS in the African sub-continent.”

Hopefully this trend of denouncing homophobia from nations outside of Africa, much like what’s happened in Uganda, will be a trend to set the standard for human rights which provides equal protections for and urges the decriminalization of being a member of the LGBT community.

Steven Monjeza (L) and Tiwonge Chimbalanga sit in a pick-up truck before appearing at a magistrate court in Blantyre January 4, 2010.

Source Text:

www.gayagenda.com

Bernice King, Martin Luther's King granddaughter

Recently, Bernice King, the youngest daughter of the late and great Civil Rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., has taken the lead role as president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), which was founded by her father in 1955 after Rosa Parks was arrested for failing to give up her seat on a bus for a white man.

But, when it comes to Civil Rights, according to Bernice, they don’t apply for LGBT Americans. King doesn’t support marriage equality and doesn’t believe her father would have either, stating:

“I know deep down in my sanctified soul that he did not take a bullet for same-sex unions.”

Over the years, the SCLC has struggled to hold it’s place of prominence and the group’s member ship has been greatly reduced, due to lack of interest and infighting.

However, not all Civil Rights leaders agree with King’s daughter when it comes to same-sex marriage or her father’s possible view on the subject.  In an interview with gayagenda.com, Congressman John Lewis (D-GA), who led the 1965  voter rights marches from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama and worked side by side with MKL Jr. stated:

“It is unfortunate that a segment of our society fails to see that we all should be treated like human beings, that we all are citizens of the United States of America. I’ve taken the position and I’ve long held this position that I fought too long and too hard against discrimination base on race and color not to stand up and speak out against discrimination based on sexual orientation. It doesn’t matter if someone is gay or straight or whether someone believes in a different philosophy or different religion. We’re one people, we’re one family, and we’re one house. There is not any room in American society for discrimination based on sexual orientation. It doesn’t matter whether someone is gay or happens to be lesbian or transsexual. We’re one people; we’re one family, the American family. You call it what you want, discrimination is discrimination and we have to speak up and speak out against discrimination. You have too many people in this society saying they’re against same-sex marriage. If people fall in love and want to get married, it is their business. Martin Luther King Jr. use to say races don’t fall in love in love and get married; individuals fall in love and get married. So if two men or two women want to fall in love and get married it’s their business. Some people say it is a threat to the institution of marriage, and some of these people who go around saying that same sex marriage is a threat to the institution of marriage, which marriage or what marriage are they talking about? Some of these same individuals have had several marriages and I don’t think individuals that happen to be gay are a threat to anybody’s marriage. Love is love. It is better to love than to hate, it is better to be together than to be divided.”

So, perhaps King’s daughter is out of touch, or maybe the fact she’s a Baptist preacher has skewed her views towards the LGBT community, which last I knew, includes people of all races and colors.

Perhaps her attitude, which is slowly diminishing is one reason groups such as the SCLC are having difficulty maintaining it’s shrinking number of members.  One would think, the opinions of those such as Mr. Lewis, who lived through the Civil Rights Movement, and was  an important part of, would be of greater value than someone who perhaps is riding on the coattails of a namesake.

Civil Rights are for all Americans and should not be granted based upon sexual orientation, which unfortunately, is a concept widely misunderstood by those who are deeply embedded within certain Christian ideologies.

It surprises me, that someone who lost their father because he was fighting for equality,  would let themselves believe that they are qualified to judge who is, and who is not equal.

Fuente:

http://www.gayagenda.com/2009/11/the-homophobia-of-mlk-jrs-daughter/