Equally Speaking
The following is a transcript of HRC’s morning news webcast "Equally Speaking." To view the current videos visit the main Equally Speaking page.
Good morning, and thanks for tuning in to Equally Speaking, your morning dose of GLBT news from the Human Rights Campaign for Thursday, June 12. I’m Shelena Williams.
And I’m David Paul. First up, news from California.
A third county official in California announced her county will no longer be performing wedding ceremonies due to staff and monetary constraints. Butte County Clerk Candace Grubbs says the county can’t afford to continue holding ceremonies but that they will still offer marriage licenses. Grubbs says the recent decision has nothing to do with the upcoming start date of marriages for gay and lesbian couples.
San Francisco lesbian couple Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, who were the first to wed at City Hall in 2004, will once again be the first same-sex couple to marry legally. Mayor Gavin Newsom said he will officiate the ceremony for the couple, who have been together for more than five decades. Gay and lesbian couples can obtain marriage licenses in California starting June 17th.
An Oakland, California bishop is urging East Bay Catholic parishioners to challenge the state’s Supreme Court Ruling allowing marriage for gay and lesbian couples. Failing to do so would make Catholic life countercultural, the bishop wrote in a statement published in the Diocesan newspaper, The Catholic Voice. This decree flies in the face of a statement from California’s Catholic Conference of Bishops, which earlier in the month asked parishioners to accept domestic partnerships and civil unions.
GLBT students in St. Paul, Minnesota have formed an informal gay-straight alliance at Bethel University, a college founded on strict evangelical Christian theology. The student group faces difficulty, as detailed in a Newsweek report, because the college does not recognize groups whose values conflict with Bethel’s religious mission. Issues of acceptance are an even larger issue at Southern Baptist Union University in Jackson, Tennessee, Newsweek found, where the penalties for being openly GLBT include a fine, community service, counseling, probation and parental notification.
Coors Brewing Company is the first U.S. corporation to become a sponsor of The Mathew Shepard Foundation’s Campaign to Erase Hate. The goal of the campaign is to rid schools, workplaces, and communities of hatred targeted at GLBT individuals. Coors scored a one hundred percent rating in HRC’s Corporate Equality Index.
A defamation lawsuit by a Montreal man seeking $400,000 in damages from his gay neighbors reached a settlement on the eve of the civil trial. The dispute, which received heavy media coverage in 2001, started after his neighbors became the first couple to take advantage of Quebec’s civil union law. The lawsuit alleged the couple falsely accused the man of homophobia and harassment.
That’s the news from us today. Thanks for tuning in to Equally Speaking.
Have a great day, and we’ll see you back here again tomorrow morning.