[OutVoice] Prop 8 trial wraps + Brit PM hosts Pride + more LGBT news

[tworadio at aol.com]

 "THIS WAY OUT: the international lesbian & gay radio magazine"
Program #1,160 - distributed 6/21/10
Airs on more than 200 local stations around the world... or
Listen now via our free podcasts at
http://www.thiswayout.org
(hosted by Greg Gordon and produced with Lucia Chappelle)
Lawyers' last words close the U.S. federal Prop 8 trial;
British P.M. Cameron commemorates Pride with coalition commitments;
Rising hate crimes raise concerns in Canada and Puerto Rico, 3 U.S.
federal departments make incremental Pride month progress, bogus
gay blood donation bans remain in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., France,
 and Germany, a Dublin artist draws Catholic ire, and more LGBT news
  
- In "NewsWrap": Closing arguments cap the closely-watched federal trial in San Francisco challenging the constitutionality of California's marriage equality-banning Proposition 8... the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development requires funding applicants to comply with state and local laws banning anti-LGBT bias, the U.S. Department of Justice says that gays and lesbians abused by their domestic partners are protected under the Violence Against Women Act, and the U.S. State Department issues new guidelines removing reassignment surgery as a precondition for the issuance of passports to trans people in their self-identified gender, but a panel of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration recommends maintaining a ban on gay men donating blood, while policies about such donations in France, Germany, Canada, Australia, Japan, Sweden, Spain, and Italy vary... Statistics Canada reports a doubling of anti-queer hate crimes from 2007 to 2008, while the government of Puerto Rico creates a commission to examine anti-queer violence and how to curb it... and a painting of the Pope blessing a gay male couple riles Roman Catholic Church officials in Ireland and around the world (written by GREG GORDON, and reported this week by SHERI LUNN & MICHELE PLEASANT).
  
- BRITAIN’s new Conservative Party PRIME MINISTER DAVID CAMERON delivered his LGBT PRIDE MONTH greetings to a gathering of invited community leaders on June 16th in the Rose Garden at Number 10 Downing Street.  He also spoke on behalf of his government partner, Liberal Democrat Nick Clegg. The right-left coalition was born of a nearly unprecedented split election, and it seems to have pointed the Tories in what was already an increasingly more queer-supportive direction. Cameron's remarks at the reception were recorded by a "Pink News" reporter in the crowd.
  
- Lawyers for the plaintiffs declared that CALIFORNIA's ban on same-gender marriage created by PROPOSITION 8 violates the U.S. Constitution and discriminates against lesbian and gay couples. Lawyers for the defense said they did not need evidence to prove that marriage is between a man and a woman, claiming that every society defines it that way. Those were some of the closing arguments in the first federal trial challenging the ballot initiative that eliminated California's state Supreme Court-ordered marriage equality. Attorneys summed up their cases in front of a packed SAN FRANCISCO courtroom on June 16th. With comments by many of the principals in the case, Pacifica Radio's MARK MERICLE and CHRISTOPHER MARTINEZ offered comprehensive on-scene coverage of the story on that night's California Evening News.
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On the air since April 1988, "This Way Out" is the multi-award-winning internationally distributed weekly gay and lesbian radio newsmagazine.
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