Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who delivered speeches, held fund-raisers and lobbied lawmakers to legalize same-sex marriage in New York, will now punctuate his official advocacy with an unusually personal gesture - presiding over the marriage of two top City Hall aides at Gracie Mansion. The New York Times reports that Mr. Bloomberg will officiate at the nuptials of his chief policy adviser, John Feinblatt, and his commissioner for consumer affairs, Jonathan Mintz, partners of 14 years who have two young daughters, city officials said. The marriage is scheduled for July 24, a month to the day after Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo signed the same-sex marriage bill into law. As mayor, Mr. Bloomberg can marry any couple he wishes — a right that Mr. Bloomberg, who is divorced and lives with his longtime partner, Diana Taylor, has used sparingly over the last nine years. He has married just two couples since taking office: he presided over the wedding of his oldest daughter, Emma, in 2005, and that of former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, in 2003 (who, ironically, continues to renege on a promise to marry two gay friends who took him in during his acrimonious divorce). Mr. Bloomberg offered to marry the City Hall couple, according to his aides, despite his general reluctance to officiate at weddings. The reason, they said, was his long and close relationship with Mr. Mintz and Mr. Feinblatt, who worked closely with the mayor on the campaign to legalize same-sex marriage.
Los Angeles Archbishop Jose H. Gomez, writing in The Tidings, urges California legislators to reject two bills: Assembly Bill 499, which would permit children under the age of 12 to decide for themselves if they wish to be vaccinated against sexually transmitted diseases, and Senate Bill 48, which would require all state public schools to include in social studies curriculum contributions made by homosexuals. The Archbishop calls on all Catholics to “commit ourselves to promoting the God-given rights of parents and families in California and in our country. Let us work to become a people who no longer resort to abortion, birth control, in vitro fertilization and divorce. Let us build a future for our nation in which children grow up in families based on God’s law and the natural law.”
Writing in The Daily Mail, art critic Brian Sewell, who is openly bisexual, decries the preponderance of gay storylines on the dramas Coronation Street and EastEnders. Sewell says “ Is it true that the lives of heterosexual Mancunians are haplessly intertwined with transvestites, transsexuals, teenage lesbians and a horde of homosexuals across the age range? Is Manchester now the Sodom of the North? Coronation Street has a gay scriptwriter, Damon Rochefort. Fine. Nothing wrong with that. Indeed, its very first writer, its inventor in 1959, Tony Warren, was gay and open about it when homosexuality was still illegal and the penalties dire — and had a tough time with homophobia. But the pendulum has swung to the other extreme, and where once we had no gaiety at all, we now, perhaps, have rather too much.” He adds “There’s too much, not only of gay men — who are estimated to make up just 6 per cent of the population, but who dominate the storylines in the soap — but also of lesbians, bisexuals, the trans-gender community, cross-dressers and everyone else with some sexual quirk or fetish. It is not just Coronation Street — EastEnders is at it, too, with, last month, boys in bed together, apparently naked. The dear old egalitarian BBC protested that its policy is to portray gay and hetero- sexual relationships in exactly the same way, both equally suitable for pre-watershed viewing. But are they equally suitable? Are soaps, watched by pre-pubescent children — who may still have some tattered remnant of innocence that we should cherish — really a proper platform for sexual propaganda and special pleading?”
"Thankfully, one of the stars of Coronation Street, Charlie Condou, who plays Marcus Dent, one of four regular characters who is gay, takes umbrage with Sewell’s stupidity, writing a response in The Guardian the begins “So, Brian Sewell writes in The Daily Mail that Coronation Street is too gay. Well, I don't know him, I'm sure he's a lovely man, but aside from the barely-veiled homophobia, he's just plain wrong.” Condou writes that “Sewell seems to suggest there's something morally reprehensible in being gay, and that there's some kind of promotion of a gay agenda at work (led by a sinister-sounding "mafia"). But in fact you barely see a kiss from the gay characters, just like our heterosexual counterparts. It's not a "sexy" show.” He adds that he has faith in the show’s writers, in their ability to tell character-driven stories. Condou concludes “The way to encourage equality is through exposure – but not by ramming sexuality down people's throats. I think Coronation Street has succeeded in encouraging the acceptance of gay people since its inception, and in a gentle, straightforward way, and I'm very proud to be part of that heritage. Sewell's article worries me because it seems to be part of a change in mood that reminds me of the Section 28 years, when everyone was shouting out that the gays were taking over. This week's news that Opera North had pulled the plug on Lee Hall's opera Beached over explicit references by a gay character to his sexuality has added to this. It feels like we're moving backwards, and I find that shocking.”
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