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Tag: Gay Marraige

  • United Nations Now Recognizes Staff Members’ Legal Same-Sex Marriages

    The United Nations will now recognize and provide equal benefits to legal same-sex marriages of its staff members despite the laws of their home country.

    U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon announced the news Monday at the world body.

    Prior to Monday’s announcement, a staff member’s personal status was based solely on the laws of their country of nationality, said U.N. spokesman Farhan Haq.

    “Human rights are at the core of the mission of the United Nations,” said Ki-moon. “I am proud to stand for greater equality for all staff, and I call on all members of our UN family to unite in rejecting homophobia as discrimination that can never be tolerated at our workplace.”

    Now the United Nations will recognize all same-sex couples, but only couples married in a country where it is legal, of which there are currently 18.

    “The Secretary-General said human rights are at the core of the mission of the United Nations,” Haq said. “He’s proud to stand for greater equality for all staff. He also calls on all members of the U.N. family to unite in rejecting homophobia.”

    UN-GLOBE, a United Nations LGBT group, released a statement via its president Hyung Hak Nam.

    “With this new policy in place at the UN, I believe that the entire UN system will follow suit, if history is any guide. And if any agency, fund or programme still refuses to change, we will make sure they hear from us,” said Hyung Hak Nam.

    “This includes the UNJSPF, our pension fund. In fact, with this new policy in place at the UN, it is my hope that the pension fund will be under a lot of pressure to change its discriminatory policies towards staff. And we will be front and center advocating for change.”

    The new policy became effective June 26, and will affect the U.N.’s estimated 43,000 employees worldwide.

    Employees of other U.N. agencies, including the children’s agency UNICEF and the U.N. cultural agency UNESCO, are not under the new guidelines, Haq said.

    Image via YouTube

  • Sara Gilbert And Linda Perry Say “I Do”

    Sara Gilbert And Linda Perry Say “I Do”

    We will have to wait until next Monday to get all the juicy details surrounding Sara Gilbert’s wedding to former 4 Non Blondes singer and music producer Linda Perry. However, Gilbert’s The Talk co-hosts couldn’t hold back a few remarks. Julie Chen said on Monday’s show, “Let’s get started with a big congratulations for our own Sara Gilbert, who got married last night. It was magical. It was the most beautiful ceremony.”

    Co-host Aisha Tyler agreed, “Amazing, amazing night. Beautiful, and it was at sunset and overlooking the ocean.” Then she remembered that the crew was going to let Gilbert talk about the ceremony after she returns to the show next week following her honeymoon. “I mean, we can’t tell too much about it because we want Sara to talk about it.”

    The Roseanne actress, 39, has been engaged to Perry, 48, since April 2013. Gilbert who admits to normally being a shy and reserved person, gushed last year on the The Talk when describing how Perry proposed, “It’s like the most amazing proposal ever.” She added, “I’m sitting there listening and I’m kind of daydreaming and I’m thinking like, ‘If I ever proposed to her this would be an amazing way to do it.’ The people picnicking next to us pull out string instruments from under the blanket, walk over and they start playing [The Cure’s] Lovesong.”

    Gay weddings are currently legal in 17 states: California, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, New Jersey, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington state, New Mexico and Hawaii, and Washington DC.

    Image via YouTube Screenshot

  • Obama Gay Marriage Support Sees Urban Backlash

    The Presidential election season is upon us and things are going to start to get nasty. Now that we know, for sure, who the two candidates are going to be, they will start to solidify their beliefs and try to demonize the other guy. Last week, President Barack Obama came out in support of gay marriage. While this was a flip flop from his previous stance, it pretty much reflects the party line. But he may have hurt himself more than helping himself in this instance. After the announcement of his support, there has been some complaints from his urban base. Here is a recording of a morning radio show on hip hop station Hot 97 in New York City:

    As you can see from this selectively edited video, people who listen to this station are angry. Some don’t think that it is right for gay people to get married, some do not agree with gay people at all. It was summed up perfectly when the hosts asked a caller identified as Anthony: “Anthony, how do you feel about Obama? You’re not feeling him, huh?” Anthony’s response is what many African Americans seem in general to feel, and while the overall support numbers for minorities and gay marriage are gaining, they are still mainly against it. He said “No, because I’m totally against that same-sex marriage, man. I’m 27, I grew up in the days where a female’s supposed to marry a female, I mean a male supposed to marry a female.”

    Proposition 8 was on the ballot in California in 2008. It was a measure that, as described in Wikipedia, would add a new provision, Section 7.5 of the Declaration of Rights, to the California Constitution, which provides that “only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.” While it passed by a slim margin of 52.24% who voted yes to 47.76% who voted no, the biggest eye opener for the Democratic party and liberals in general is that 70% of African Americans voted yes on prop 8.

    So it seems as though Obama has a bigger hole to pull himself out of now, because a New York Times/CBS News poll found Sixty-seven percent said they thought Obama’s announcement was made “mostly for political reasons,” while 24 percent said it was “mostly because he thinks it is right.” Also found in the poll was that 70 percent of Independents attribute the president’s move to politics, along with nearly half of Democrats. A caller on Hot 97 had pretty much the same sentiment saying: “I’m not going to vote for Obama because I feel like… he knew he was losing votes and he needed to get people’s attention. And that’s what he did. Why did he want to do this now?””