Gay Unions

The Vatican's top official for family issues decried as a "sad step" the Spanish government's proposal to allow homosexuals to marry and adopt children. The remarks by Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillov kept up Pope John Paul II's campaign against gay marriage. Spain's Cabinet proposed the measure Friday.

As an avid Kerry supporter, I was extremely disappointed to read in The Times that Sen. John Kerry stated he would have voted for Missouri's same-sex marriage ban (Aug. 7). In 1955, Rosa Parks sparked a national debate on civil rights, which ultimately caused the U.S. Supreme Court to outlaw segregation on city buses. Black people gained the right to sit at the front of the bus. If the Supreme Court had mandated: "Blacks will have the same rights, but on separate buses. They will not be called buses.

Gay and lesbian couples can marry under Washington state law because denying them that right is unconstitutional, a judge ruled Wednesday. Prohibiting same-sex couples from marrying is "not rationally related to any legitimate or compelling state interest," said King County Superior Court Judge William L. Downing, who issued his ruling in response to a challenge of a state law defining marriage as between a man and a woman.

A judge threw out charges against two Unitarian Universalist ministers for officiating at the weddings of 13 gay couples. New Paltz Town Justice Judith Reichler dismissed the charges against the Revs. Kay Greenleaf and Dawn Sangrey, declaring that the state had displayed an antigay bias. The judge also sharply questioned the constitutionality of the state's gay-marriage ban.

Conservative Episcopalians called on the world's leading Anglican archbishops Friday to recognize their emerging network as a separate church within the worldwide Anglican Communion unless the Episcopal Church reverses its liberal views on homosexuality. Conservatives associated with the newly developing Anglican Communion Network had been careful not to imply that they wanted the group to be recognized as a legitimate national church separate from the 2.3-million member Episcopal Church.

The California Supreme Court appeared ready Tuesday to declare that San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom lacked the legal authority to permit 4,000 gay couples to marry earlier this year. During a two-hour hearing, several members of the state high court suggested that city officials should have filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of California marriage laws before permitting same-sex couples to marry.

History is a wily dealer. When it slapped down the same-sex marriage issue in San Francisco three weeks ago, it handed a wild card not only to President Bush and Sen. John Kerry but also to the mainstream American news media. The question for the Republican incumbent, his presumptive Democratic challenger and the media is this: Is the country witnessing the birth of a broad new civil rights movement or a countercultural insurgency?

In what was widely seen as another clash between faith and academics at Baylor University, the school's president on Tuesday condemned an editorial in the student newspaper supporting gay marriage, and made clear that the administration would exert tighter control over the paper's content. In remarks published in the Baylor Lariat, President Robert B. Sloan Jr. called Friday's editorial "out of touch with traditional Christian teachings."

California Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer said Monday that he would go to the California Supreme Court this week and ask the justices to decide whether marriages between gays violate the state's Constitution. If the justices agree to hear the case, the rare move could bypass lower courts that are currently considering whether San Francisco officials can give marriage licenses to same-sex couples in defiance of state laws that limit marriage to "a man and a woman."

As legal challenges awaited the more than 3,000 marriage licenses granted to same-sex couples in San Francisco, two very different events Sunday highlighted contrasting facets of gay and lesbian relationships. In San Francisco, a bittersweet ceremony blessing gay couples took place in a church that held many memories of those lost to AIDS.