Posts made by raphjd

Within the EU, there are individual national laws on civil unions/partnerships, but there is no EU treaty or EU wide law on it.

While in certain things there can be leeway between written policy and actual practice, in most others there can not be.

If a country does not accept a civil union, then the couple can not immigrate to another country under such a visa.  They will need to find another type of visa or not move, separate or whatever.

Before the UK had civil partnerships, partners were not guaranteed to be able to visit their partner in the hospital.  State hospitals {NHS} treated gay couples as not family, while private hospitals were much friendlier to gays.  In 2002, I was supposed to have sinus surgery in an NHS hospital and on the admission form they clearly said that all non family visitation was not allowed for short term in-patients.  Thankfully, my surgery was pushed to a private hospital due to scheduling conflicts at the NHS hospital, meaning that my partner could visit me the whole time.

YES, there is leeway in what "marriage" is under treaties and international law.  There are no treaties or international law that deal with civil unions, not even within the EU.

Ignoring treaties is a whole different issue.  There are things that can be done, such as sue in international courts or go to war or ignore it or whatever.

Many treaties are never signed by various countries.  Human rights treaties were/are rarely, if ever, signed by communist countries or countries ruled by dictators.  This means that unless they are doing things like genocide, there is very little that can be done under international law.  An example is that the US under GWB never signed the World Court treaty for fear that Americans {mainly the GWB administration} would be tried for war crimes.  Nor did the US sign the Kyoto Agreement {climate change treaty}.

There is a difference between "full faith and credit" between the states and "comity" between nations.  While both mean the same, their scope is very different.

There is leeway in marriage laws for individual countries and this is allowed under the various treaties and international law.  The issues I mentioned before is changing from marriage to civil unions.  While marriage comity has long been established under various treaties and international law, civil unions is not.  So if the US stopped doing state marriages and went only to civil unions, every country in the world would be fully within their right to refuse it.

The problem with removing "marriage" from the government is that you will need to change a lot of treaties.  Then of course, it makes it the logical time for the government to take away countless rights granted under the current marriage laws.

Mr Humphries was an odd case.   Each of the 2 creators {Croft and Llyod}  claimed something completely different.  One said he was most definitely gay, while the other said he was not gay.

The show was originally a "vehicle" for Trevor Bannister {Mr Lucas}, but the audiences fell for Molly Sudgen's {Mrs Slocombe} and John Inman's {Mr Humphries} characters.

Side Note:  Despite what you see on wikipedia, the pilot was in black and white, not color. They reshot the episode in color and gave it a proper name.  On the dvd for series 1 {at least in the UK} they have both the black and white pilot and the color remake.

I'm tempted to keep a small card in my wallet identifying my boyfriend as having visiting rights, if ever.

That will have ZERO effect if the law doesn't allow non family visitation.

There is no system in place to give AA automatically.  So people that want it must ask for it.

In the UK, racial minorities on tv are over represented.  As an example, the wonderful tv show BEING HUMAN had 3 white main character in the pilot episode.  When the show cam back on air, a black girl and a more ethnic looking white guy and of course the ever white Russell Tovey whom the show was created for.

While gays in the US are total flaming, screaming queens, the UK {especially on the BBC, with the exception of the Doctor Who franchise} tend to make them out to be nasty people.  They are sex fiends, sexual predators or some other nastiness, who get run out of town, commit suicide or get sent to prison.

Lesbians still get free reign on tv, while gay men are treated like shit.

Sadly the idiots at work make it so we have to use IE for many things.

Even banking can be a PITA if you use something other than IE.

Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) slammed the new order as an "unprecedented power grab by the unelected members" of the FCC. Hutchison, ranking member on the Senate Commerce Committee, vowed to introduce a resolution of disapproval to condemn the vote.

She gets a lot of money from ISPs, so it's no wonder she's their whore in the Senate.

In a parliamentary debate last month, Claire Perry, a Conservative MP who has campaigned for tighter controls, said that 60% of nine- to 19-year-olds had found porn online, while only 15% of computer-literate parents knew how to use filters to block access to certain sites.

I want to know where she is getting her figures before I can trust them.

This is just a piggy back on to the whining the UK government did about 2 weeks ago over young girls wearing whore clothes.

I'm having a problem with this story.

I can not find it on a respectable site.  The only "news" site that is carrying it is The Sun and they are well known for making up news stories.  The other sites that are carrying it are just repeating what The Sun printed.

Going through the list, I see no surprises there.

It also must be noted that Don't Ask, Don't Tell is a very long way from actually being repealed.  There are still a huge amount of hoops that must be jumped through to get to the total repeal stage.  One of the first steps is answering the question about DoMA and discrimination against gays in the area family benefits.  Most likely, it will be ruled that gays will not get any family benefits, thus discriminating against us while claiming a victory for non discrimination.

While this is good news for the tiny amount of gays that are in the military, it does nothing for the vast majority of American gays that have absolutely no protection in areas such as jobs, housing, banking, credit and countless other areas.

Just like all other homophobic attacks in the UK {and crime in general} they will get off with a tiny slap on the wrist at the very most.

The helpdesk is flooded with all kinds of basic questions that have been repeated answered all over this site.

A separate section where people click saying they read the rules won't make any difference because no one reads the rules and they will just click the button anyway, then complain at us.

Make sure you put the VIDEO_TS folder inside a folder with the proper name of the video.

The world does not live in the context of that one single video.  My previous comments were based on real world that the video is based in.

Who is to say that rugby player didn't want to kiss the gay steward?  Unless you have proof that it was real and not scripted like with rest of the video was, then your screams of "victim of pressured unwanted sexual advances" is moot.  Rugby players are notoriously gayer than the biggest flaming queens, just watch them in the lockerrooms and pubs.

Straight men use women as sex objects all the time, so why is it so utterly horrible when they are used in the same way?  Oh, that's right, we can't have them being used that way by fags.

As I previously said, gays are always supposed to lighten up, while every other group screams and moans like whores in church.

While this is extremely minor, it does show a blatant rejection of homosexuality.

Also, imagine if the video were slightly different and the rugby player rejected a black woman or whatever.  Do you think the outcry would be any less?

Why are gays supposed to lighten up, but no other minority group has to?

NOTE:  I'm not in favor of removing that rejection bit, just wondering aloud.

I'm not so sure.

The things she told us are in the very distant past, so maybe she doesn't mind sharing those things.  Then again, it could all have been made up to justify her spot THE only valid chat show host.  Another thing was she was battling Roseanne for the pot of TV's greatest diva.  Roseanne already came out with all her stuff, most of which Oprah claimed to share.

If you watched her show from the beginning, you would have noticed that she often had a lot of openly gay people on her show, then suddenly they were all gone.  You can't say the network forced her to do it as she was quite powerful at the time and could easily have told them to fuck off.   So that laves me to wonder why she pushed all the gays off her show.  It's as if she was trying to say "see, no gay people here, so I can't be a lesbian".