Topeka Kansas Mayor Worries That Proposed Domestic Partnership Registry Will Led To Same Sex Marriage, Netherlands Lower House Approves Bill That Will Require All Marriage Registrars To Wed Same Sex Couples, Massive Blaze Destroys Iconic Gay Dance Club In Fire Island, Man In Custody Charged In Fatal Shooting Of Ex-Boyfriend In Well-Known Las Vegas Gay Bar, Transgender Widow Of Texas Firefighter Appeals Court Ruling That Marriage Was Invalid

Advocates of a proposed domestic partner registry in Topeka, Kansas say it is more about facilitating business and equality than it is about same sex relationships. But Topeka Mayor Bill Bunten is worried the registry is the first move toward legalizing gay marriage and is a step down the wrong path. “I’m afraid I’m too old for this,” Bunten said of the registry Tuesday evening during the city’s work session. “What I see happening all throughout this city and across this country is a minimizing of the need for a man and a woman to have a family. You don’t have to do that anymore. It’s accepted, and I think that’s the wrong road to go down.” The Topeka council, reports The Capital-Journal, had a first reading of the registry during its regular meeting Tuesday. The registry would, for a fee, allow certain unmarried couples to register their relationship for health benefit and hospital visitation purposes through participating employers. The registry would serve as a documented proof of the relationship by a governing body, a necessary aspect for some employers that extend benefits voluntarily to their employees’ domestic partners, said councilman Andrew Gray. The registry won’t compel employers to offer health benefits to domestic partners, nor would it grant the rights or benefits of marriage as defined by state law to the couples, said Gray, who is sponsoring the registry. It wouldn’t cost the city anything to operate either, he said. And it most certainly isn’t set out to destroy or minimize traditional marriages, Gray said in response to Bunten’s concerns. “That’s not the intent of it at all,” he said, adding that cities in Kansas don’t have the authority to legalize gay marriages, because it is a state issue. In fact, the registry will benefit more heterosexual people than it will the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community, said Jason Chaika, chairman of the Kansas Equality Coalition’s Political Action Committee. That is because the registry defines a domestic partnership as a relationship between two unrelated, unmarried, cohabitating people, regardless of gender, who are in an interdependent relationship. So the registry would apply to unmarried heterosexual couples that share a residence, too, he said. “This is not about gay marriage or eroding marriage in any way,” he told commissioners during the public comments of the regular meeting. “This is about offering benefits. This is about facilitating businesses to move to this city.” But, Bunten said, the registry would be giving some recognition in a positive way to same sex couples — to which Gray asked if that was a bad thing. Bunten said he didn’t understand why having the registry would make a difference. It will make a difference, Gray said, even if some see it as just a symbolic one. “There is a lot of power behind symbolic moves,” he said. “In this case, it could show that Topeka is both an open and tolerant society for those who aren’t considered the majority.” To that end, the registry could help bring in businesses, which increasingly are interested in a diverse workforce, as well as motivate other businesses to extend health benefits to employees’ domestic partners, he said. The registry is set for a vote during the November 29 city council meeting, at which point, Gray said, he hoped the council would vote to approve it, adding, “I hope every one of us has the moral courage it takes (to adopt this).”

Radio Netherlands Worldwide reports that a majority in the lower house have voted in favour of a Green Left sponsored bill that will force all marriage registrars to marry same-sex couples. The measure was passed by 84 votes in favour and 58 against. Until now, registrars in the country who objected on religious grounds were allowed to refuse to marry same sex couples. However, because marriage registrars are civil servants, they are bound by the country's anti-discrimination legislation and must therefore marry same sex couples even if they object. If the Senate approves the bill, it will end the practice of tolerating discrimination against lesbians and gays. It is uncertain if the bill will make it through the Senate as the Christian Democrats and the SGP-a small fundamentalist Christian party-are sympathetic towards civil servants who claim an exemption to the law on religious grounds.

The Pavilion dance club, the focus of the social scene in gay-centric Fire Island Pines, was destroyed Monday night in a spectacular fire that illuminated the eastern horizon opposite Long Island. On Tuesday morning, the fire was still exhaling ghostly trails of gray smoke into the dank sky above Great South Bay. On the muddy ground in front of the charred skeleton of the Pavilion, a soot-stained male mannequin dressed in a black swimsuit was the only recognizable survivor of the mayhem: the building — sealed, closed and hurricane-proofed for the off-season — was unoccupied. Its contents were incinerated, reports The New York Times. Jon Wilner, a Pines resident whose real estate office was in the Pavilion building, said that besides patronizing its parties, he had twice brokered its sale. “I watched this building when it was being built, and last night I watched it burn down,” he said. “It’s a horror. For anyone who lives or rents here, they feel like it was their building, too. It represents their lifestyle, and the Pavilion was the place where they could celebrate it.” Forty-three Long Island fire companies responded to the blaze, which began around 8:00 pm, with 400 firefighters working in shifts through the night to try to contain the damage to a tinderbox of a summer community that, like much of Fire Island, is defined by a series of wooden structures connected by boardwalks that snake through groves of pines and bamboo hedges. Firefighters from Long Island commandeered the Fire Island Empress, a ferry docked in Sayville, to take them across Great South Bay on Monday night. The fear was that the fire, not thought to be suspicious, might spread to adjacent structures, including the local Fire Department headquarters, and nearby residences, most of them boarded up for the winter. That did not happen, in part because of a southerly breeze. Only one residence was damaged after the wind blew embers across Pines Harbor and onto its roof. It, too, was unoccupied. But there was no chance of saving the Pavilion, which a team of investors — led by Andrew Kirtzman, a former NY1 and WCBS-TV newscaster and author — bought for $17 million in 2010 in a deal that gave it control of 80 percent of the Pines’ commercial properties. The building housing the Pavilion was rebuilt after the 2006 season. Kirtzman, 50, wandering around the periphery of the wreckage on Tuesday wearing a fireman’s jersey and a bereaved expression, had expressed a desire to transform the Pavilion and his other Pines properties, including the Blue Whale restaurant, known for its low tea — early evening drinks — into “a gay utopia.” The Pavilion was the site of high tea, actually an enormous dance party. Kirtzman’s other properties were undamaged, but the Pavilion was the one to which he was most sentimentally attached. Kirtzman, who owns a house down the boardwalk from the Pavilion, said he and his business partners, Seth Weissman and Matt Blesso, had not yet considered what to do next. “This is so jarring,” he said. “It’s shocking to me. I was here 10 days ago and everything looked perfect. The Pines needs a beautiful night club. To the people who live in the Pines, the Pavilion was like our church. I first went to the Pavilion in 1981, and when I got out in the middle of that dance floor, I was blown away by how stylish and decadent and quasireligious it all felt.” Along with the Pavilion building, where high tea drew celebrities like Tom Ford, Calvin Klein and Madonna, the adjacent LaFountaine building, containing seven Pines businesses, including the Sip n’ Twirl disco, a pizza parlour, a clothing shop and two real estate offices, was ruined. Nicole LaFountaine, 42, a third-generation Fire Islander and the owner of her family’s 1980 building, said she arrived on the scene at 9:30 p.m. on Monday and was confronted by “an enormous fireball burning into the sky.”

The suspect in a fatal shooting at a local gay bar in Las Vegas faces murder charges after being arrested at the airport while trying to flee Las Vegas. KTNV reports police said they arrested 50-year-old Tracy Dale Kauffman at McCarran International Airport as he was preparing to purchase a ticket to fly out of Las Vegas, Nevada. The arrest came after authorities responded to an early-morning shooting at the Garage, a well-known gay bar on East Flamingo Road near the UNLV campus. When authorities arrived, they found a man dead from apparent gunshot wounds. He was later identified as 29-year-old Phil Wells, a bartender at the business. After his arrest, Kauffman was booked into the Clark County Detention Center on the charges of murder with a deadly weapon and burglary with the use of a deadly weapon. Later, sources said the suspect and the victim had a dating history that began in Knoxville, Tennessee. Wells, the victim, worked for Kauffman at a bar in Knoxville when a romantic relationship began. When the relationship ended, Wells moved to Las Vegas for a fresh start away from Kauffman. Those close to Wells described his ex-boyfriend as jealous and called the breakup a "falling out." It's unclear whether Kauffman came to Las Vegas for the sole purpose of unleashing his rage against Wells. Now behind bars without bail, Kauffman faces his first court appearance for a 48-hour hearing on Wednesday.

The transgender widow of a Wharton County firefighter appeared in court on Monday to appeal a judge’s ruling that her marriage was invalid, according to KHOU. A judge recently ruled Nikki Araguz’s marriage to Captain Thomas Araguz was not valid because she was born a man, making her ineligible to receive $600,000 in her husband’s death benefits. Araguz has been fighting with the firefighter’s family over the benefits ever since his death in a blaze at a local egg farm last year. Thomas Araguz’s family argued that the money should go to the two children he had with his ex-wife. According to attorneys, it’s likely that the $600,000 in benefits won’t be released until the appeals process is over, and that could take another year.