Spain's parliament is to declare support for rights to life and freedom for great apes on Wednesday, apparently the first time any national legislature will have recognized such rights for non-humans.
Parliament is to ask the government to adhere to the Great Ape Project, which would mean recognizing that our closest genetic relatives should be part of a "community of equals" with humans, supporters of the resolution said.
In Russia, persons of Caucasus descent are called Black.
The Caucasus peoples of Abidjan, and Crimea are sometimes called black because, relatively speaking, they are darker and less European in their appearance.
Interviewed on CNN, Jefferts Schori was asked if it was a sin to be homosexual.
"I don't believe so. I believe that God creates us with different gifts. Each one of us comes into this world with a different collection of things that challenge us and things that give us joy and allow us to bless the world around us," she said. "Some people come into this world with affections ordered toward other people of the same gender and some people come into this world with affections directed at people of the other gender."
I wonder how long until she throws out the other nine commandments.
Tim Bono, of Bono Film and Video, sued the Arlington County government last week after its Human Rights Commission found him in violation of the county's anti-discrimination laws.
The commission said he denied services to a gay-rights activist based on her sexual orientation. The activist, Lilli Vincenz, had asked Bono to duplicate some archival footage of early gay-rights marches that she had on Betamax tapes.
Bono refused. He said his refusal had nothing to do with Vincenz's sexual orientation but with the content of the videos, which he deemed antithetical to his Christian values.
In April, the Human Rights Commission sided with Vincenz, and ordered Bono to either duplicate the videos or find someone else to do it at Bono's expense.
Bono filed a lawsuit challenging not only the commission's decision but also the county's anti-discrimination law. The lawsuit contends that state law prohibits counties like Arlington from adding sexual orientation to the list of categories that receive antidiscrimination protection, like race and sex.
The day after Bono filed the lawsuit in Arlington Circuit Court, the Human Rights Commission decided on its own initiative to vacate its earlier order against Bono.
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Bono's lawyer, Rena Lindevaldsen, said Monday she has no plans to withdraw the lawsuit and still wants to challenge the validity of the Arlington law under Virginia's constitution.
A BUNDABERG couple who beat and starved two little boys have been jailed in Victoria for what a judge described as "sustained brutal and heartless treatment".
It took Judge Leslie Ross almost 15 minutes to detail the injuries suffered by the boys, then aged two and four, at the hands of their mother and her de facto partner in 1998.
Photographs submitted in evidence showed the boys beaten black and blue, with severe bruising and cuts covering their bodies.
Clumps of hair were missing from their heads and bruises to one boy's buttocks were so severe that Judge Ross said it was impossible to differentiate between them.
The older child received permanent brain injury after falling down stairs and the younger child was found to be suffering malnutrition.
U.S. Rep. Jim Nussle, the Republican candidate for governor, said today that amending the Iowa Constitution to include a ban on gay marriage would contribute to the state's quality of life.
Spelling out in the Constitution that marriage is between a man and a woman "demonstrates what kind of quality of life we have in Iowa and I think that’s a selling point Iowa ought to use," said Nussle on a taping of "Iowa Press."
The [Kansas] Senate took up a bill last week that sets a minimum age for marriage at 16 with parental consent. The bill was prompted by a case in which a 21-year-old Nebraska man came to Kansas to marry a 13-year-old girl pregnant with his child. Kansas currently has no minimum marriage age.
Before the Senate approved the bill, Sen. Kay O'Connor, an Olathe Republican, pushed through an amendment to allow those under 16 to marry if a judge agrees it’s in their best interest. O'Connor, a supporter of last year’s ban on gay marriage, said she would rather not set any minimum.
[A]n act, passed on January 25, 1806, ... provided that "all slaves emancipated after May 1, 1806, must leave the state within twelve months after the act of emancipation, or be sold for the benefit of the literary fund." ... Because of its passage hundreds of petitions were addressed to the legislature by Negroes asking to be exempted from the penalty of the law. In these documents individuals were forced to show that their residence would not be injurious to the state... .
