Posts made by raphjd

@stealfire:

Personally, even if I was straight I don't think marriage is of personal importance.  If two people are right for each other they'll stay together.  A marriage certificate isn't going to change that.  However, I think the right to marry is an important stepping stone to being treated as equals, as a precedent for future issues, for the satisfaction of those who choose to marry and to assuring benefits, etc., to our chosen family.

You don't see the 1,400+ rights granted under marriage in the US as important?

I'm not sure where you got the idea that no porn stars are tested.  They all are.

Ok, maybe some shit hole country not required testing, but the US and Europe do require it.

The biggest single slave owner was the Church of England and they are the reason that it took so long for the UK to ban slavery.

From memory, it cost the UK government an equivalent of £64 Billion in today's money to buy them out of the slave industry.

YES, you did very off topic.

IN Canada we had MAD COW DISEASE, IN USA its was known as downer syndrome
IN CANADA it was called SARS, in the USA it was known as severe pneumonia

Down Syndrome in the US is not related to mad cow disease and never has been.  The US also had SARS.

Down Syndrome and "mad cow" have some similar symptoms, maybe that's what you are thinking.

Google "sars in the us" and the first 3 links will be to the US's Center of Disease Control or CDC and it talks about SARS.

NO, my first sentence wasn't a joke.  It's not just the US that has that sort of knee-jerk reaction either homophobia is still quite common in many places, even the supposedly gay friendly ones.

I don't doubt they are homophobes and used their religion, if they are indeed religious, as an excuse.

Because of this ruling, christians are demanding that the coalition government exempt them from the Equalities Act of 2010 parts that prohibit discrimination against gays, due to their religion/beliefs.

NOTE:  The Equalities Act of 2010 is nothing more than the combining of all previous anti discrimination laws and grouping it all under 1 umbrella law.

I think the "G-men" that are bitching about this are afraid that people will automatically think they are gay too.

Hmmm, maybe that is what "G-man" always stood for.

If this hotel owner couple really believed that only hetero married couples share a bed, then they should have put it on their website and their brochures.

That would still be illegal in the UK.

The only legal way they can do this is to not allow anyone to share a bed, regardless of marital status and/or gender.

Caprica {cancelled prequel to Battlestar Galactica} and Modern Family {sitcom} are both US shows.

Yes, John Inman was gay.

Soccer

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.