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British House of Lords advances marriage equality bill
The British House of Lords today (June 4) has advanced the campaign for marriage equality in England and Wales.
A majority in the House of Lords voted to defeat a motion that would block the marriage equality bill, a proposal called a “wrecking amendment.”
The upper house voted 390-148 to support the bill, which would allow same-sex couples to marry in both civil and religious ceremonies in England and Wales. Scotland is working on its own marriage equality measure. Same-sex couples who are in civil partnerships could convert them into marriage.
The bill has more readings in Parliament and must also be approved by the queen.
In an email to equality advocates, Ben Summerskill of Stonewall, England’s largest LGBT civil rights group, said, “The Bill now heads to a Committee of the whole House of Lords where we can expect continued vocal – and often deeply offensive – opposition to these modest proposals. In just the last 24 hours we’ve heard Members of the House of Lords compare loving, committed same-sex relationships to incest and polygamy.”
The prime minister has said he hopes same-sex couples can marry in England next year.
To follow the Stonewall campaign, go to the group’s Facebook page.
Anti-gay cardinal resigns amid allegations of inappropriate behavior with other priests
Britain’s highest-ranking Catholic, Scotland’s Cardinal Keith O’Brien, resigned his position as archbishop of Edinburgh and St. Andrews amid allegations of “inappropriate behavior” with other priests dating back 33 years. The development is just days before the virulently anti-gay cardinal would have been part of the 115-men conclave to elect the next pontiff.
In a resignation statement released to the press by the Catholic Church in Scotland on Monday, O’Brien said, “Approaching the age of 75 and at times in indifferent health, I tendered my resignation as Archbishop of Saint Andrews and Edinburgh to Pope Benedict XVI some months ago.”
The resignation alluded to the allegations of inappropriate behavior, which focused on his treatment of lower-ranking clerics: “For any good I have been able to do, I thank God. For any failures, I apologize to all whom I have offended.”
But the Vatican insisted that Pope Benedict XVI accepted O’Brien’s resignation solely because he was nearing the retirement age of 75 — not because of the accusations. O’Brien himself issued a statement Monday saying he would skip the conclave because he wanted to avoid becoming the focus of media attention at such a delicate time.
“I do not wish media attention in Rome to be focused on me – but rather on Pope Benedict XVI and on his successor,” said O’Brien, who had been archbishop of St. Andrews and Edinburgh. “However, I will pray with them and for them that, enlightened by the Holy Spirit, they will make the correct choice for the future good of the church.”
Through his spokesman, O’Brien has contested allegations made Sunday in a British newspaper that three priests and a former priest had filed complaints to the Vatican alleging that the cardinal acted inappropriately with them.
At O’Brien’s St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Cathedral in Edinburgh, his decision to step down was met with shock and disbelief.
“There are a lot of unanswered questions here, and I am unhappy about that. People can make such serious charges while remaining anonymous,” said David Murphy, an administrator from Edinburgh. “It’s like he’s been hounded out of office without a proper chance to defend himself.”
But Peter Mitchell, a churchgoer from Fife, conceded that the church may have to brace itself for scandal. “These don’t appear to be random allegations. We are talking about three serving priests who are being very specific, and I don’t think they would lie in this way.”
O’Brien said in a statement that he was in “indifferent health” and had offered his resignation last November – a statement confirmed by the Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi.
Usually the pope waits until after a cardinal’s 75th birthday to accept a resignation. In this case, Benedict acted a few weeks early. Lombardi said the pope had merely acted on the resignation now as he clears up final tasks before stepping down. Usually the pope waits until after a cardinal’s 75th birthday to accept a resignation. In this case, Benedict acted a few weeks early.
O’Brien has drawn fire for his homophobic remarks, including describing same-sex marriage as “grotesque” and comparing it with slavery.
The cardinal’s action comes in the wake of a grassroots campaign to shame another cardinal, retired Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony, into refraining from participating because of his role protecting sexually abusive priests.
Mahony, however, has defiantly said he would participate in the voting for the new pope.
The difference boils down to the fact that O’Brien himself was accused of improper behavior, whereas Mahony was shown to have covered up for other priests who raped and molested children. That distinction has long shielded bishops from Vatican sanction.
Several other cardinals who will elect the next pope have been accused — and some have admitted — to failing to protect children from abusive priests. If all of them were to recuse themselves for negligence, the College of Cardinals would shrink by quite a few members.
Terrence McKiernan of BishopAccountability.org, an online database of records on clergy abuse cases, urged other whistleblowers to come forward if they have information about other compromised cardinal electors.
“It is a public demonstration of the role that clerics with inside information can have in bringing accountability to a church where secrecy has led to a crisis of sexual misconduct,” he said. “Cardinals who are tainted by the crisis cannot choose the person who will solve it.”
With O’Brien’s recusal and the decision of a frail Indonesian cardinal to stay home, there are expected to be 115 cardinals under age 80 who are eligible to vote in the conclave.
Separately Monday, Benedict changed the rules of the conclave, allowing cardinals to move up the start date if all of them arrive in Rome before the usual 15-day waiting period between the end of one pontificate and the start of the conclave. It was one of his last acts as pope before stepping down Thursday.
The date of the conclave’s start is important because Holy Week begins March 24, and Easter Sunday is March 31. In order to have a new pope in place for the church’s most solemn liturgical period, he would need to be installed by Sunday, March 17, a tight timeframe if a conclave were to start on March 15, as previous rules would have required.
Also Monday, Benedict decided that the contents of a secret investigation into the 2012 leaks of Vatican documents won’t be shared with the cardinals ahead of the conclave. Benedict met Monday with the three elderly cardinals who conducted the probe and decided that “the acts of the investigation, known only to himself, remain solely at the disposition of the new pope,” a Vatican statement said.
Speculation has been rife in the Italian media that the three cardinals — Julian Herranz, Jozef Tomko and Salvatore De Giorgi — would be authorized to share the information with fellow cardinals before the conclave. That assumed the cardinal electors would want to know details about the state of dysfunction in the Vatican bureaucracy and on any potentially compromised colleagues before possibly voting one into office.
Benedict appointed the three men last year to investigate the origins of leaks, which revealed petty wrangling, corruption, cronyism and even allegations that senior Vatican officials conspired to out a prominent Catholic newspaper editor as gay.
The pope’s butler was convicted of aggravated theft in October for having stolen the papers and given them to a journalist who then published them in a blockbuster book.
The three cardinals cannot share the full contents of their investigation, but it’s unclear if they could give subtle hints about potential papal candidates to the electors. The Vatican’s assertion that only the pope knew the contents of the dossier was a clear message to readers of Italian newspapers, which have run several articles purporting to know the contents of the report.
O’Brien’s decision to remain home rather than participate in the conclave made his the first head to roll in the remarkable two weeks since Benedict, 85, stunned the world and announced he was becoming the first pope in 600 years to resign.
Monday’s action marked a dramatic end to a career that got off to a rocky start when in 2003, as a condition of being made a cardinal, O’Brien was forced to issue a public pledge to defend church teaching on homosexuality, celibacy and contraception. He was pressured to make the pledge after he had called for a “full and open discussion” on such matters.
At the time, O’Brien said he had been misunderstood and wanted to clarify his position. But it’s clear now he never really changed his mind. On Friday, three days before his resignation was made public, O’Brien told the BBC that celibacy should be reconsidered since it’s not based on doctrine but rather church tradition and “is not of divine origin.”
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Around world, massacres have spurred gun control
If there’s anywhere that understands the pain of Newtown, Conn., it’s Dunblane, Scotland, the town whose grief became a catalyst for changes to Britain’s gun laws.
In March 1996, a 43-year-old man named Thomas Hamilton walked into a primary school in this central Scotland town of 8,000 people and shot to death 16 kindergarten-age children and their teacher with four legally held handguns. In the weeks that followed, people in the town formed the Snowdrop campaign – named for the first flower of spring – to press for a ban on handguns. Within weeks, it had collected 750,000 signatures. By the next year, the ban had become law.
It is a familiar pattern around the world – from Britain to Australia, grief at mass shootings has been followed by swift political action to tighten gun laws.
Many in the United States are calling for that to happen there, too, after the shooting of 20 children as young as six at a school in Newtown, Conn. Many other Americans are adamant the laws should not change.
In Dunblane, residents have been gathering at the town’s massacre memorial to sign a book of condolence – but are loath to advise grieving Americans what to do.
“It is not for us to tell the U.S. about gun control. That is for the people there,” said Terence O’Brien, a member of the Dunblane community council. “What happened here was similar in many respects, but the wider culture is different.”
When it comes to guns, the United States is exceptional. The United States has the highest civilian gun ownership rate in the world, with 89 guns per 100 people, according to the Geneva-based Small Arms Survey.
Gun advocates, including the powerful lobby group the National Rifle Association, have blocked attempts to toughen U.S. gun laws in the wake of previous mass shootings. Gun supporters say that the right to bear arms, enshrined in the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, makes firearms ownership a civil rights issue, rather than simply an issue of public safety.
Supporters of gun control often cite Australia’s dramatic response to a 1996 shooting spree in the southern state of Tasmania that killed 35 people.
The slaughter sparked outrage across the country and within 12 days federal and state governments had agreed to impose strict new gun laws, including a ban on semi-automatic rifles like the Colt AR-15 used by the Tasmania killer. The Connecticut killer used a similar, rapid-firing weapon.
Gun ownership was restricted to people with genuine need or sporting shooters with gun club membership. Some 700,000 guns were bought back and destroyed by the federal government from owners who no longer qualified to possess them.
The changes were unpopular with politicians from rural areas with high numbers of hunters and farmers. But, as in Britain after Dunblane, the strength of public opinion swayed politicians from both government and opposition parties.
Gun laws also were strengthened in Canada after the 1989 slaying of 14 female engineering students in Montreal by a woman-hating gunman, and in Germany after a 19-year-old expelled student killed 16 people, including 12 teachers, in Erfurt in 2002.
Even gun-loving Finland – with 45 firearms for every 100 people – tightened its laws after two school shootings in 2007 and 2008, raising the minimum age for firearms ownership and giving police greater powers to make background checks on individuals applying for a gun license.
Did it work? In Australia’s case, the change appears dramatic. There were a dozen mass shootings with at least five deaths in the country between 1981 and the Tasmania massacre; there have been none in the 16 years since.
Studies have tracked a reduction in gun deaths in Australia since the 1996 reforms, particularly in suicides. The journal Injury Prevention reported in 2006 that the risk of dying by gunshot had halved in Australia in a decade.
In 2010 in Australia, there were 0.1 gun murders per 100,000 people, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, less than half the rate of a decade earlier. In the United States the murder rate was more than 30 times higher, at 3.2 per 100,000.
The connection looks simple – countries with tighter gun laws and fewer guns have lower levels of gun crime.
But experts say it is not quite so straightforward.
“The irony in the U.K. is that in the four years from 1998 when handguns were fully banned, gun crime continued to rise,” said Peter Squires, a professor of criminology at the University of Brighton. “We were in a phase in the 1990s when street gangs were becoming the new urban disorder … and we were hit by a whole new problem of converted and replica and reactivated guns.”
In the long run, Squire thinks the change in law did make a difference. Gun crime in Britain has been falling since its peak in 2002 – a decline also seen in other Western countries – and there are now only a few dozen firearms homicides each year.
But, he said, “for the first four years it played into the classic NRA script that gun control has failed.”
The U.S. gun lobby sometimes cites peaceful, alpine Switzerland as an example of a country that has many privately owned guns and little violent crime.
Like the United States, it has a strong gun culture and with plentiful shooting clubs – but also a mass citizen militia. Members of the part-time militia, in which most men serve, are allowed to keep their weapons at home, and the country of less than 8 million people owns at least 2.3 million weapons, many stashed under beds and in cupboards.
But while Swiss homes contain guns, but little ammunition, which is largely kept under lock and key at local military depots. Most adult gun users have military training.
And Switzerland went through its own soul-searching after a man named Friedrich Leibacher went on the rampage in the regional parliament in the wealthy northern Swiss city of Zug in September 2001. He killed 14 people and himself, apparently over a grudge against a local official.
The massacre, along with a campaign to reduce Switzerland’s high level of gun suicide, led to a referendum last year. It proposed that military-issued firearms must be locked in secure army depots and would have banned the sale of fully automatic weapons and pump-action rifles.
Voters decisively rejected it.
Those who believe tighter gun laws are necessary acknowledge they are no panacea. Norway has strict gun controls, but Anders Behring Breivik shot 69 people dead in July 2011 with a pistol and a rifle he acquired legally by joining a shooting club and taking a hunting course.
But gun control advocates say the alternative is worse.
“There is no act of Parliament, no act of Congress, that can guarantee there’ll never be a massacre,” former British Cabinet minister Jack Straw, who as home secretary brought in the country’s handgun ban in 1997, said Sunday. “However, the more you tighten the law, the more you reduce the risk.”
Scotland moving forward with gay marriage bill
Deputy first minister Nicola Sturgeon has announced that the Scottish government plans to move ahead with legislation legalizing same-sex marriage.
Politicians from all the main parties have endorsed such legislation, but many religious groups remain opposed.
Sturgeon, according to the Irish Times, said, “We are committed to a Scotland that is fair and equal, and that is why we intend to proceed with plans to allow same-sex marriage and religious ceremonies for civil partnerships. We believe this is the right thing to do.”
The government decision follows a “consultation” that resulted in almost 80,000 people expressing their views on gay marriage in Scotland.
Early July 25, a spokesman for the Catholic Church in Scotland told the Irish Times, “The Scottish government is embarking on a dangerous social experiment on a massive scale.
“However, the Church looks much further than the short-term electoral time-scales of politicians.
“We strongly suspect that time will show the Church to have been completely correct in explaining that same-sex sexual relationships are detrimental to any love expressed within profound friendships.”
But Tom French of the Equality Network told the newspaper, “The Scottish government have shown their determination to make Scotland a more progressive country. With cross-party support for equality in the Scottish parliament, we would expect that this change can be passed next year.
“Same-sex marriage is about equality and freedom: the freedom for couples, and religious and humanist groups that want to, to celebrate same-sex marriages; but equally, upholding the freedom of other religious groups to say no to same-sex marriages.
“That’s the right way for Scotland to deal with the different opinions on this.
“We have no problem with a small amendment to the equality act to ensure that religious celebrants who disagree don’t have to conduct same-sex marriages. We have always said that religious bodies and celebrants who do not want to conduct same-sex marriage should be free to opt out.”
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France moving toward gay marriage
France’s new president, who had campaigned for marriage equality, said he would legalize same-sex marriage in the “next few months.”
Reuters reported the news this week, based on a statement from President Francois Hollande’s office.
Hollande’s Socialist party has a solid majority in Parliament and can set the schedule for reform.
The Hollande administration also plans to guarantee adoption by same-sex couples is legal in France and will hold a series of discussions on what can be done to protect transgender citizens, according to Reuters.
Meanwhile, in Scotland, the government will announce whether it plans to pursue the legalization of same-sex marriage on July 10.
The government began an analysis of a proposal to legalize gay marriage more than a year ago. The announcement of the review prompted denunciations from the Catholic Church.
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Gay man savagely beaten, burned alive in Scotland
The charred and badly beaten body of a gay man was found tied to a lamppost by the side of a road in Ayrshire, Scotland, over the weekend.
Police in the southwestern Scottish county said they were not ruling out the possibility that Stuart Walker, 28, was killed in an anti-gay attack, The Scotsman reported. Police described Walker’s injuries as “horrific.”
Walker had been out with friends earlier in the night. He was last seen alive by a family friend at about 2:30 a.m. on Saturday.
Police said there were several house parties in a nearby housing estate in the early hours of Saturday morning. They’ve asked for anyone with information to come forward.
A Strathclyde Police spokeswoman said, “In terms of claims of his sexuality and lifestyle we are not ruling out any aspect of his life to try and identify why someone would want to kill him.”
She added: “His body was scorched but it is believed that this was not the cause of his death. We are looking at CCTV and conducting door to door inquiries.” (CCTV refers to closed-circuit television systems used for surveillance.)
Nearby streets were sealed off as part of the ongoing investigation.
Kazza Sutherland, who worked with Walker at the Royal Hotel in Cumnock, described him as “a great guy.”
“I hope they catch those who did this to him. Hopefully justice will be served and I hope those who did this go to hell,” she said.