WORLD NEWS

World news in brief
Anglican leader says gay relationships OK: report

Friday, August 22, 2008

LONDON (AP) — In newly disclosed letters, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams wrote that the Bible doesn’t forbid same-sex relationships when there is a commitment similar to traditional marriages, a British newspaper reported this month. The report by the Times of London was the latest development in the controversial issue of how the Anglican church should view homosexuality.
Williams has come under intense scrutiny as differing views over whether to accept changes in traditional biblical understanding of same-sex relationships have threatened to split the 77 million-member Anglican Communion. The newspaper reported that Williams outlined his views on the controversial subject in letters written between 2000 and 2001 to Deborah Pitt, a psychiatrist and evangelical Christian who asked for his opinion. “I concluded that an active sexual relationship between two people of the same sex might therefore reflect the love of God in a way comparable to marriage, if and only if it had about it the same character of absolute covenanted faithfulness,” the newspaper quoted Williams as writing. The Anglican uproar over homosexuality erupted in 2003, when the Episcopal Church, the Anglican body in the United States, consecrated the first openly gay bishop, Gene Robinson of New Hampshire.

Berlin monument to gay victims of Nazis damaged

BERLIN (AP) — German police say vandals have damaged the new memorial in Berlin to gay victims of the Nazis. Police said Saturday that someone had broken a window on the monument overnight and that they had no immediate suspects. The window is a key part of the memorial, allowing visitors to peer into a gray concrete slab to see an image of a same-sex couple kissing. The memorial was opened in May across the street from the much-larger memorial to Jewish victims of the Holocaust. Nazi Germany declared homosexuality an aberration that threatened the German race and sent thousands of gays to concentration camps.

Gay couples in Argentina may claim widow’s pension

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — Argentina on Monday announced its first nationwide gay rights measure: granting same-sex couples the right to claim their deceased partners’ pensions. Couples must prove they have been living together for at least five years to receive the benefit, Amado Boudo, executive director of the national social security administration, told local television reporters. The government’s national decree will “put the rights of all cohabitants on a level playing field,” Boudo said. Gay activists welcomed Monday’s announcement as the fruition of years of campaigning the government to grant them the same rights as heterosexual married couples. Gay civil unions already are legal in five cities, including Buenos Aires. The measure is “historic” and marks a “step forward” for human rights because it is the first nationwide gay rights measure approved by the government, gay activist Pedro Paradiso Sottile told the Associated Press. “The government is moving past words to action,” said Sottile, an activist with the 24-year-old Argentine Homosexual Community organization in Buenos Aires. Prior to the new decree, the deceased partners’ pensions went directly to the government. “The state was stealing our money,” said Alejandra Portatadino, also a member of the Argentine Homosexual Community, calling the previous law “discriminatory” and “anti-constitutional.” The organization will now focus efforts on nationalizing civil unions, which would confer additional rights to gay couples, such as adoption and inheritance, Sottile said. Buenos Aires was the first Latin American capital city to legalize gay civil unions in 2002. Since then, the Argentine capital has become one of the hotspots on the international gay-friendly tourist circuit, going head-to-head with Rio de Janeiro.

Blood transfusions give Argentine patients HIV

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — Two intensive-care patients contracted HIV after receiving blood transfusions at public hospitals in the Argentine province of Cordoba, a newspaper reported Aug. 15. An unidentified donor gave blood at a Cordoba city hospital in December, testing negative for HIV, Health Minister Oscar Gonzalez was quoted by Cordoba’s La Voz del Interior newspaper as saying. When the donor returned in May to give blood again, tests came back positive for the virus — but the blood had already been distributed, the newspaper said, citing Gonzalez. The newspaper did not identify the donor, the hospital or the infected patients, in line with a national law that does not allow such information to be disclosed publicly. As in the United States, blood donors in Argentina are given an extensive questionnaire to limit high-risk donors, who officially include gay men who’ve had sex in the past five years. About 120,000 people are infected with HIV in Argentina, Latin America’s fourth-most populous nation.

national | local | world | arts | classifieds | real estate | about us

© 2008 | A Window Media LLC Publication | Privacy Policy