The conservative National Action Party of President Felipe Calderon has vowed to challenge the gay marriage law in the courts. However, homosexuality is increasingly accepted in Mexico, with gay couples openly holding hands in parts of the capital and the annual gay pride parade drawing tens of thousands.
The bill calls for changing the definition of marriage in the city's civil code. Marriage is currently defined as the union of a man and a woman. The new definition will be "the free uniting of two people."
"They have given Mexicans the most bitter Christmas," said Armando Martinez, the president of the College of Catholic Attorneys. "They are permitting adoption (by gay couples) and in one stroke of the pen have erased the term 'mother' and 'father."'
Only seven countries allow gay marriages: Canada, Spain, South Africa, Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands and Belgium. U.S. states that permit same-sex marriage are Iowa, Massachusetts, Vermont, Connecticut and New Hampshire.
Argentina's capital became the first Latin American city to legalize same-sex civil unions in 2002 for gay and lesbian couples. Four other Argentine cities later did the same, and as did Mexico City in 2007 and some Mexican and Brazilian states. Uruguay alone has legalized civil unions nationwide.
The City Council passed a measure Tuesday legalizing same-sex marriage, making the nation’s capital the first jurisdiction below the Mason-Dixon Line to allow such unions.
The bill, which passed by an 11-to-2 vote, may still face obstacles in Congress, among city voters and in the courts, but most advocates of same-sex marriage say they expect it to become law by spring. Mayor Adrian M. Fenty has said he will sign the bill.
“It isn’t that I’m fearful of losing,” Mr. Catania said. “I think the process is diminishing. I think that putting the rights of minorities on the ballot and allowing the forces of intolerance to spend an unlimited amount to demonize and marginalize a population is unsavory.”
In November, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington said that if the ordinance were passed, the church might have to limit its social service programs that help residents with adoption, homelessness and health care.
Paul A. Samuelson, the first American Nobel laureate in economics and the foremost academic economist of the 20th century, died Sunday at his home in Belmont, Mass. He was 94.
When economists “sit down with a piece of paper to calculate or analyze something, you would have to say that no one was more important in providing the tools they use and the ideas that they employ than Paul Samuelson,” said Robert M. Solow, a fellow Nobel laureate and colleague of Mr. Samuelson’s at M.I.T.
Mr. Samuelson attracted a brilliant roster of economists to teach or study at the university, among them Mr. Solow as well as others who would go on to become Nobel laureates like George A. Akerlof, Robert F. Engle III, Lawrence R. Klein, Paul Krugman, Franco Modigliani, Robert C. Merton and Joseph E. Stiglitz.
Mr. Samuelson wrote one of the most widely used college textbooks in the history of American education. The book, “Economics,” first published in 1948, was the nation’s best-selling textbook for nearly 30 years. Translated into 20 languages, it was selling 50,000 copies a year a half century after it first appeared.
[...]
His most influential student was John F. Kennedy, whose first 40-minute class with Mr. Samuelson, after the 1960 election, was conducted on a rock by the beach at the family compound at Hyannis Port, Mass. Before class, there was lunch with politicians and Cambridge intellectuals aboard a yacht offshore. “I had expected a scrumptious meal,” Mr. Samuelson said. “We had franks and beans.”
Mr. Samuelson is survived by his second wife, Risha Clay Samuelson; six children from his first marriage: Jane Raybould, Margaret Crawford-Samuelson, William and the triplet sons, Robert, John and Paul; and 15 grandchildren. Mr. Samuelson is also survived by a brother, Robert Summers, a professor emeritus of economics at the University of Pennsylvania and father of Lawrence H. Summers, director of President Obama’s National Economic Council and former secretary of the Treasury under President Clinton and former president of Harvard.
Houston became the largest city in the United States to elect an openly gay mayor on Saturday night, as voters gave a solid victory to the city controller, Annise Parker.
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“Tonight the voters of Houston have opened the door to history,” she said, standing by her partner of 19 years, Kathy Hubbard, and their three adopted children. “I acknowledge that. I embrace that. I know what this win means to many of us who never thought we could achieve high office.”
With all precincts reporting, Ms. Parker, the city controller, had defeated Mr. Locke 53 percent to 47 percent.
Nine days after announcing a major escalation in the war in Afghanistan, President Obama arrived at Norway’s City Hall on Thursday to formally accept the Nobel Peace Prize, evoking the notion of a “just war” and robustly defending the use of military force “on humanitarian grounds” and to preserve peace.
“Still, we are at war,” he said, “ and I am responsible for the deployment of thousands of young Americans to battle in a distant land. Some will kill. Some will be killed. And so I come here with an acute sense of the cost of armed conflict — filled with difficult questions about the relationship between war and peace, and our effort to replace one with the other.”
Across the street from the institute, a crowd chanted and held up a yellow banner, saying: “Obama You Won It, Now Earn It.”
The president is scheduled to return to Washington on Friday.
The United States will have representation in Copenhagen throughout the negotiating process by State Department negotiators and Cabinet officials who will highlight the great strides we have made this year towards a clean energy economy.
If we prepare for climate change by building a clean-power economy, but climate change turns out to be a hoax, what would be the result? Well, during a transition period, we would have higher energy prices. But gradually we would be driving battery-powered electric cars and powering more and more of our homes and factories with wind, solar, nuclear and second-generation biofuels. We would be much less dependent on oil dictators who have drawn a bull’s-eye on our backs; our trade deficit would improve; the dollar would strengthen; and the air we breathe would be cleaner. In short, as a country, we would be stronger, more innovative and more energy independent.
Although this is the state’s first Senate race with no incumbent since 1984 — for a legendary seat that John F. Kennedy, Daniel Webster and John Quincy Adams held before Edward Kennedy — polling places reported strikingly low turnout. Election officials said that may have been because voters were preoccupied with the holiday season.
She secured an early endorsement from Emily’s List, the influential fund-raising network for candidates who support abortion rights. And she quickly came out against the amendment restricting abortion access in the House health care bill last month, saying, “It’s personal with me, and it’s personal with every woman.”
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She billed herself as “a different kind of leader,” even though all four Democrats had nearly identical positions on most issues. All, like Mr. Kennedy, espoused liberal values, supporting abortion rights, same-sex marriage and universal health care and opposing the death penalty.
Mr. Brown, 50, is a lawyer and a lieutenant colonel in the Massachusetts National Guard who has served in the state legislature since 1996. He opposes same-sex marriage and the health care legislation being debated in Congress, and supports President Obama’s decision to send more troops to Afghanistan.
Winning unaffiliated voters, who make up half of the state’s electorate, will be crucial for Mr. Brown. He has emphasized his ability to work across party lines, while casting himself as the only candidate with conservative values.
“The joke among the hotels,” said Elson Strahan, who helps oversee a historic site in town, “was that with tourism down, everyone should book as many of those rooms as they can.”
“Certainly this is an emotional issue and an important issue for many New Yorkers,” said Senator Tom Libous, the deputy Republican leader. “I just don’t think the majority care too much about it at this time because they’re out of work, they want to see the state reduce spending, and they are having a hard time making ends meet. And I don’t mean to sound callous, but that’s true.”
During debate, Sen. Ruben Diaz, a conservative minister from the Bronx, led the mostly Republican opposition.
“If you put this issue before the voters, the voters will reject it,” Diaz said. “Let the people decide.”
Sen. Eric Adams, D-Brooklyn, challenged lawmakers to set aside their religious beliefs and vote for the bill. He asked them to remember that once even slavery was legal.
“When I walk through these doors, my Bible stays out,” Adams said.
“That’s the wrong statement,” Diaz countered later. “You should carry your Bible all the time.”
Happy Thanksgiving!
...Mr. Yildiz, a straight-A physics student who had hoped to become a teacher, was tutoring fellow students so he could make extra money to live independently. But by coming out as gay in a patriarchal tribal family, he had become the ultimate affront to both religious and filial honor, even with parents who adored him.
“Ahmet’s father had warned him to return to their village and to see a doctor and imam in order to cure him of his homosexuality and get married, but Ahmet refused,” Mr. Kaya said. “Ahmet loved his family more than anything else and he was tortured about disappointing them. But in the end, he decided to be who he was.”
That clash of values permeates Turkish society. While Turkey’s aspiration to join the European Union is pushing the Muslim-inspired government to accept and even promote civil liberties for women and homosexuals, some traditionalists remain ill at ease with a permissive attitude toward sexuality and gender roles.
Gay rights groups argue that there is an increasingly open homophobia in Turkey. The military, which is the guardian of Turkey’s secular state, regards homosexuality as a disorder.
Will fill this space shortly.
Voila!
The delinquency figure, and a corresponding rise in the number of those losing their homes to foreclosure, was expected to be bad. Nevertheless, the figures underlined the level of stress on a large segment of the country, a situation that could snuff out the modest recovery in home prices over the last few months and impede any economic rebound.
Unless foreclosure modification efforts begin succeeding on a permanent basis — which many analysts say they think is unlikely — millions more foreclosed homes will come to market.
“I’ve been pretty bearish on this big ugly pig stuck in the python and this cements my view that home prices are going back down,” said the housing consultant Ivy Zelman.
The overall third-quarter delinquency rate is the highest since the association began keeping records in 1972. It is up from about one in 14 mortgage holders in the third quarter of 2008.
The District of Columbia Board of Ethics and Elections said a measure that would ban same-sex marriages cannot go on the city’s ballot. Opponents of same-sex marriage wanted to ask voters whether “only marriage between a man and woman” should be recognized.
The elections board said that putting a measure to ban same-sex marriage on the ballot would conflict with the city’s Human Rights Act.
