GAY TRUTH

December 13, 2013 ( MercatorNet ) - There were tears of indignation outside of Australia’s High Court yesterday, but it was the result that everyone expected: a law passed on December 3 authorising same-sex marriage in the Australian Capital Territory was unconstitutional. The marriages of the 30 or so gay and lesbian couples who had exchanged vows under the law have now been annulled. “This is devastating for those couples who married this week and for their families,” said the spokesman for Australian Marriage Equality , Rodney Croome . “However, this is just a temporary defeat. What is far more important is that the ACT’s law facilitated the first same-sex marriage on Australian soil and showed the nation the love and commitment of same-sex couples. The marriages in the ACT prove that this reform is not about politics, but about love, commitment, and fairness.” It had always been clear that under the Australian Constitution , the regulation of marriage is exclusively a Federa...

September 4, 2013 ( MercatorNet ) - We have all, or nearly all, done it -- talked about " gay marriage " or "same-sex marriage". But according to William B. May, who has been in the thick of the marriage debate in the United States , that's a mistake. MercatorNet asked him to explain. MercatorNet: People trying to defend marriage know that “same-sex marriage” is a contradiction in terms, nonsense in fact, but isn’t it just shorthand for referring to an issue? What’s the harm? William B May: The only reason there is a debate about the legal definition of marriage is because of confusion about its true meaning and purpose. Without truth about marriage, people take positions based on emotion and sentimentality. To restore the truth about marriage we must witness it in a way people can understand. The first thing to consider is that no one is really proposing to put something called “same-sex marriage” in the law. They take “a man and a woman” and replace it with ...

English: Kevin Rudd, 26th Prime Minister of Australia. (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Recently, new legislation redefining marriage as the “union of two people regardless of sex, sexual orientation or gender identity” took effect in New Zealand, and 31 officially recognised weddings of same-sex couples took place. Some of them, predictably, were media events sponsored by radio stations and public institutions. A lesbian couple had their ceremony on board a flight from Queenstown (where else?) to Auckland after winning a competition run by New Zealand’s largely government owned national airline. Jesse Tyler Fergusson, a gay advocate and cast member of television show Modern Family was flown in from the US for the occasion. Paul McCarthy and Trent Kandler from Newcastle, advertising themselves as the beginning of a wave of Australian same-sex couples wanting such rituals, had a ceremony hosted by Tourism NZ at Te Papa, the county’s national museum. The government tourism agency p...

polyamory: a primer (Photo credit: Pierre LaScott ) August 7, 2013 ( MercatorNet ) - When the Supreme Court struck down section 3 in the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in US v Windsor in June, same-sex marriage was not the only beneficiary. The decision seems to have given fresh impetus to polyamory as well. This is not news that “marriage equality” fans welcome. They look upon legalised polyamory as a dangerous foe because it confuses the message of their own campaign. “Marriage should be extended to people who can’t get married, not those unable to marry six people,”  says Jonathan Rauch , author of  Gay Marriage : Why It is Good for Gays, Good for Straights, and Good for America . However,  Anita Wagner Illig , a long-time polyamory spokeswoman, told  Newsweek  that the DOMA decision had been a great help: "A favorable outcome for marriage equality is a favorable outcome for multi-partner marriage, because the opposition cannot argue lack of prece...

July 16, 2013 ( MercatorNet ) - The Broadway production of  Evita  closed in January and re-opened in Philadelphia last week. Or so it seemed when Pennsylvania Attorney-General Kathleen Kane channelled Eva Peron and told a cheering crowd that she would not defend the state’s Defense of Marriage Act. DOMA was plainly unconstitutional, she said, because it defines marriage as between a man and a woman. The newspapers carried only a few snatches from the press conference. But these fail to give the flavour of her speech, which owed more to the lyrics of the musical than the words of her law books. She declard that she taken a road to the moral high ground: “In deciding which path to take, I looked at it this way. The governor’s going to be OK. He has a team of lawyers, very good lawyers. As a party to this lawsuit, I’m going to be OK. I have a good team of lawyers as well. But in thinking about who represents all of you, who represents the Daves and the Robbies and...

British actor Rupert Everett says he “can’t think of anything worse” than two gay men bringing up a child together—an opinion that is probably held by vast numbers of people who would not dare to say so in public. But, thanks to the magic shield of celebrity, actors can get away with speech “crimes” that the rest of us would (metaphorically) hang for. Rupert Everett. Being gay himself also deflects criticism—Everett came out as a homosexual 20 years ago and has said that this damaged his acting career. His comments on gay parenting were made in an interview with the  Sunday Times Magazine last weekend (alas,  The Times  is only accessible to paid subscribers so we rely on  The Telegraph  here). Everett, probably best know for his role as a gay man in the 1997 film  My Best Friend’s Wedding , says his mother, Sara, who was also interviewed for the article, “still wishes I had a wife and kids. She thinks children need a father and a mother, and...

English: Melinda Gates in World Economic Forum (Cropped version) (Photo credit: Wikipedia )  If you are not too greedy and need only a modest amount of other people’s money, get a sawed-off shotgun and a balaclava. However, if you are more ambitious, get an acronym. This is clearly the lesson to be drawn from the latest banking scandal, in which Britain’s leading banks scammed US$300 billion, perhaps much more, by fibbing about the Libor—the London Interbank Offered Rate —an acronym which politicians had never heard of and regulators hardly questioned. But the same mistake was made all over again at this week’s London Family Planning Summit. The rich and famous of the world have donated $2.6 billion to meet the “unmet need” of 120 million women in the developing world for family planning. The UK has pledged $800 million, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation $560 million, the UNFPA $378 million, Norway $200 million, the Netherlands $160 million, and Germany $122 millio...