GLBT DIGEST February 11, 2008

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365Gay.com
http://www.365gay.com/
Go to this link for the following articles:
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Obama Wins Maine
(Washington) Barack Obama defeated Hillary Rodham Clinton in Mainepresidential caucuses Sunday, grabbing a majority of delegates as thestate's Democrats overlooked the snowy weather and turned out in heavynumbers for municipal gatherings.
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Obama Sweeps Three States, Huckabee Two
(Washington) Sen. Barack Obama swept the Louisiana primary and caucuses inNebraska and Washington state Saturday night, slicing into Sen. HillaryRodham Clinton's slender delegate lead in their historic race for theDemocratic presidential nomination.
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Gay Mormons Seek Meeting With New Leader
(Salt Lake City, Utah) A group of gay Mormons is seeking an unprecedentedmeeting with the new church president and his counselors, hoping to begin aconversation and find ways to address the concerns of its members.
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Transsexual Prisoner Guilty Of Death Threats
(Butler, Pennsylvania) A transsexual woman in prison for the castrationdeath of her husband has pleaded guilty to threatening the life of theprosecutor who put her there.
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Lawsuit Accuses Anti-Gay College Of $Billion Secret Bank Account
(Tulsa, Oklahoma) A former senior accountant at Oral Roberts Universityalleges that more than $1 billion annually was inappropriately funneledthrough the school.
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Marriage Equality News
http://samesexmarriage.typepad.com/weblog/
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Iowa: Eldora man, unable to marry in Iowa, faced hardship after partner'sdeath Gair Bridges, a gay man who lives in Eldora, knows the power ofmarriage benefits. Bridges and his longtime partner, Ron Travis, cared fordozens of foster children together. They won the "Foster Parents of theYear" award from the Iowa Foster and Adoptive Parents Association in 1996.After 24 years together, Travis had a heart attack at home in 1999 and died.On top of the grief, Bridges dealt with laws that offered him littleprotection.
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A majority of Iowa's lawmakers - 123 of 150 - say they believe marriageshould only be between a man and a woman. But it's not clear whether thosesame lawmakers have enough votes to pass a constitutional amendment to bansame-sex marriage. It's also not clear whether lawmakers will ever get achance to vote on the issue. A Des Moines Sunday Register survey oflegislators shows the 100 members of Iowa's House of Representatives aresplit 50-50 on how they would vote on an amendment to prohibit gay marriage.
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San Francisco, CA, - The 11th annual Freedom to Marry Week (February 10-16)is here, and while some gay and lesbian Americans see this as a cause tocelebrate how far the issue of gay marriage in the US has advanced, onesector of the community has good cause to say that domestic partnerships,civil unions and state marriage laws are not enough. "Same-sex binationalcouples, in which one partner is American and the other is foreign born,suffer a unique and humiliating brand of discrimination when they try tokeep their relationships intact on US soil," explains Michael Lim, VicePresident of the national grassroots organization Out4Immigration, .....
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Utah: Gathered with family members in a hospital room in January 2006,Melanie Schertz made her dying father a promise: "It's OK," she recallssaying. "I'll take care of Mom." Today, Schertz credits Salt Lake City forenabling her to keep that promise. Thanks to an ordinance approved by theCity Council a month after the sudden and unexpected loss of her father,Schertz was able to share her health insurance benefits with her mother.The ordinance prevented the family from being financially devastated laterthat year, Schertz said, when her mother suffered a serious fall, fracturingthe upper palate in her mouth, knocking out a tooth and sustaining aconcussion.
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Pink News - UK
http://www.pinknews.co.uk/
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Hillary sacks campaign manager, Obama wins Grammy
As the battle for the Democratic nomination continues to be the mostclosely-fought in decades, Senator Hillary Clinton has reordered her coreteam. Her rival Senator Barack Obama won yesterday's Maine caucus by a widemargin, his fourth victory over the weekend. The Former First Lady had beenhoping to secure the state. Last week she had to lend her campaign $5m(£2.56m) of her own money after it suffered "cash flow problems."
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Interview: The former cop who wants to run London
Brian Paddick is enjoying running for Mayor of London. The Liberal Democratcandidate may be a distant third in opinion polls, but he has one distinctadvantage in this race - lots of people know who he is. The 2008 Mayoralelection is already the most exciting contest since the post was establishedat the turn of the century. Incumbent Ken Livingstone is facing a concerted (some would say co-ordinated) barrage of negative press on everything from cronyism to his alcohol intake.
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Gay rugby tournament comes to London
One of the UK's leading gay rugby union teams are celebrating after it wasannounced that they will host next year's European tournament. London'sKings Cross Steelers will be defending their title as 2007 EuropeanChampions, which they won in Copenhagen last year. The 2009 tournament'shost venue will be West Ham FC's home ground. Rugby teams from across Europewill compete for the biennial championship title between May 22nd and 23rdnext year.
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Court backs children's books encouraging gay tolerance
A Massachusetts federal appeals court ruled last week that an elementaryschool can continue to use children's books that encourage tolerance for gaypeople. The ACLU welcomed the decision, which rejected the claims ofparents who said exposing their children to such books violated theirability to direct the religious training of their children. There has neverbeen a federal case finding a constitutional right of parents to exempttheir children from exposure to books used in public schools.
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Israeli attorney general rules gay couples can jointly adopt
The attorney general of Israel ruled on Sunday that gay couples will beallowed to jointly adopt children that are not biologically linked to eitherpartner. Menachem Mazuz ruled that there was no legal basis for differingtreatment of gay couples to straight couples. His ruling means that gaycouples will be entitled to the same rights as adopted parents as straightcouples.
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Williams under continued pressure over Sharia law speech
Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury is preparing to defendhimself following his comments on Sharia law during his address to theChurch of England General Synod in London tomorrow. Since saying that theadoption of elements of Sharia law in the UK "seems unavoidable", he hasbeen under attack from all sides. The previous Archbishop of Canterbury,Lord Carey wrote in the News of the World: "He has in my opinion overstatedthe case for accommodating Islamic legal codes."
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Forwarded from Euro-Queer
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BERLIN (AFP) - People living on the margins of Muslim society, from a heavymetal band in Iraq to transsexual Iranians and a gay Kurdish man in Turkey,managed to get their voices heard at this year's Berlin Film Festival. Aclutch of documentaries examining subjects considered taboo in Muslimcountries have played to packed audiences at the annual event, togetherwith feature films offering different takes on contemporary life in Egypt,Iran and Pakistan. Setting the tone was Indian director Parvez Sharma's "AJihad for Love," about gays and lesbians who are also devout Muslims, whichkicked off the 10-day festival's Panorama Documentary section.
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5jGE4JIl-J1atzGrfvMikiQMRBOEw
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Forwarded from Kenneth Sherrill - Ken's List
Kenneth.Sherrill@hunter.cuny.edu
kenslist@groups.queernet.org
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Contact rays.list@comcast.net if you can't access the article
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UK - NHS could pay surrogates £15,000 to have babies for gays Surrogatemothers could be given up to £15,000 of Health Service money to have children forgay couples, it emerged yesterday.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/health/healthmain.html?in_article_id=511480&in_page_id=1774
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UK - Fury as firms asked: Are your staff LGBTs? (...that's Lesbian, Gay,Bisexual or Transperson people, if you're wondering) Furious business leaders last night condemned an 'intrusive' questionnaire that requires them to reveal how many gays and transsexuals they employ.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=513330&in_page_id=1770
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NBJC Black History LGBT Profiles: Day 10 - Nadine Smith
Nadine Smith has been executive director of Equality Florida since itsinception in 1997, and was executive director of its predecessor, the HumanRights Task Force of Florida. She joined the organization in 1993 afterserving as one of four national co-chairs on the 1993 March on Washington aswell as taking part in the historic, first- ever meeting between LGBTleaders and a sitting U.S. president (Clinton) in the White House.
During her tenure as head of Equality Florida, she served four terms asco-chair of the Equality Federation and also served as a member of theDemocratic National Committee.
http://www.nbjcoalition.org/news/black-lgbt-history-day-10.html
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Forwarded from Euro-Queer
Contact rays.list@comcast.net for the full article:
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UK - Row over gay clergy threatens to divide a Synod still reeling overSharia furore
The row over the Church of England's attitude to homosexuality revives thisweek, posing another headache for the Archbishop of Canterbury as he triesto reduce the temperature over his remarks about Islamic law. In a newbook, God, Gays and the Church, the Bishop of Winchester, the Right RevMichael Scott-Joynt, attacks the acceptance of "alternative, revisionistteaching" on the issue of homosexuality.
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Forwarded from Victoria Lavin
Daily Queer News
dailyqueernews@yahoo.com
Go to the links for the following articles:
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The straight debate
A GROUP of heterosexual Harley-Davidson enthusiasts has ridden intocontroversy as it tries to join this year's Gay and Lesbian Mardi Grasparade. The Illawarra chapter of HOG, the Harley Owners Group that has morethan 1 million members worldwide, has been given approval to enter 20motorbikes, with up to 50 people, in the Sydney parade on March 2.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/the-straight-debate/2008/02/09/1202234227442.html
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New Zealand:
'God is Gay' minister to marry same-sex couples
A FORMER Methodist minister who rocked the church when he questioned itsstance on gay rights is now encouraging people to find God in food, pubs andeven poker games. Kevin Light and 18 other ministers questioned theMethodist Church's position at a synod in September last year - to no avail.
http://www.thetimes.co.za/News/Article.aspx?id=702541
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Study reports on same-sex relationships in Kansas
Number of couples increase by almost 68 percent from 2000 to 2005. A studyby the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law released in January showssame-sex couples in Kansas increased by almost 68 percent ? 3,973 to 6,663 ?from 2000 to 2005. Researchers used statistics collected in the U.S. Censusto show the distribution of same-sex couples throughout the state as well asthe difference in income between themselves and their traditionalcounterparts.
http://www.kansan.com/stories/2008/feb/11/study_reports_samesex_relationships_kansas/
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Left Wing and a Prayer
The leadership of the Democratic Party, to its misfortune, has tended toconfuse the religious right with religion, period. As a result, they can nowlook back at a long campaign of successful efforts to alienate whiteChristians, who make up two-thirds of the American electorate.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/10/books/review/Appleby-t.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=gays&st=nyt&oref=slogin
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Arrows of desire: How did St Sebastian become an enduring, homo-erotic icon?
Christian saints don't makethe cover of gay magazines every day - even lessso in a slick of baby oil and a pair of Calvins. But such was the case withlast July'sissue of reFRESH, the saint in question being played by Frenchpoliceman-turned-TV-hunk, Sebastien Moura.
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art-and-architecture/features/arrows-of-desire-how-did-st-sebastian-become-an-enduring-homoerotic-icon-779388.html
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