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If it doesn't work out there, you
could consider Canada.
Report for July 16,
2004
This report is posted as an encouragement. From
time to time, we hear reports of sodomites leaving America because there
is too much intolerance toward sexual perversion in this country. Clearly,
our nation actually falls far short in that department in that there is
too much tolerance of sexual perversion, but at least there are committed
Christians in the good old USA who continue to wrestle and fight and pray
against the aggression of New Sodom and her allies. It should be our
fervent prayer that every sodomite in this nation would either be
gloriously saved by true repentance and true faith in Christ or that they
would leave our shores forever. In this article, note the mockery of God's
holiness as well as the comment referring to "registered
partnerships," better known as civil unions. Not only are such
arrangements a violation of the laws of nature and of nature's God, His
dictated and revealed law; but also they are an incremental step toward
"gay marriage." Christians who compromise to accept one evil in
hope of defeating another "worse" evil are simply making the
devil's back-up plan operational.
Homosexual unions slowly gain momentum in Europe
By Tom Hundley, Chicago Tribune, June 30, 2004
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0406300271jun30,1,6181033
.story?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed
DE KWAKEL, Netherlands -- As Earl Carr and Peter Stroex walked down the
aisle in their tuxedos, the gospel choir launched into a soulful rendition
of "O Happy Day."
"It really was a happy day," said Carr, 41. "My mother was
crying the whole time. I was crying for the first half of the wedding, but
fortunately Peter was cool, calm and collected. Peter is the stabilizer in
our relationship."
Carr and Stroex were married last August in a civil ceremony that has
become routine in the Netherlands, the first country to fully legalize
same-sex marriages. Since April 1, 2001, when the landmark legislation
went into effect, more than 6,000 gay couples in the Netherlands have wed.
Thus far, the dire consequences predicted by many
religious conservatives have not come to pass--"God did not flood the
Netherlands," joked Carr--and the idea of same-sex marriages seems to
be gaining momentum across Europe.
Belgium is the only other European country that allows same-sex marriages,
but all of the Scandinavian countries as well as France, Germany and parts
of Spain recognize some form of gay civil unions.
In Britain, the government recently unveiled a new "civil
partnership" bill that gives gay couples all the same rights as
married heterosexual couples, and similar laws are being debated in some
of the former East Bloc states that joined the European Union in May.
In the U.S., polls indicate that most Americans oppose gay marriage.
President Bush has declared his support for a constitutional amendment
that would define marriage as a union between a man and a woman, and
debate has turned bitter. For Carr, an American who
grew up in the Chicago suburb of Cary, and Stroex, who is Dutch, it is a
reminder of why they left a small Midwestern town and moved back to
Europe.
"The people in America who won't allow gays to
marry, they're saying I'm not good enough, I'm not equal," said Carr,
a manager for a U.S. technology company in the Netherlands.
"I don't see any difference between [same-sex marriages] and what
blacks were asking for during the civil rights movement. To me, it's a
question of discrimination and equal rights," he said.
Carr and Stroex, 52, a sales engineer for a company that manufactures
industrial valves, met in 1989 when Carr was studying at Britain's
Manchester University. They have been together for 14 years, most of the
time living in the Netherlands.
In 2000, they decided to move to the United States. Carr missed the
country he still considered home, and Stroex was eager to experience life
in America.
They emptied their bank accounts and invested everything in a friend's
start-up business in New Vienna, Ohio. It didn't work out. Next, they
moved to Yellow Springs, Ohio, the home of Antioch College and a town
known for progressive attitudes.
"The atmosphere there was so nice. It was more relaxed than
Amsterdam," Stroex said.
But the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service was not so relaxed.
Stroex could get only a temporary tourist visa and was questioned at
length each time he entered the country.
"Had we been a heterosexual couple, it would have been no
problem," Carr said. "I'm an American, but I'm not allowed to
have my partner with me in America."
One solution they briefly considered was a "marriage" to a
lesbian couple in the same predicament.
"But that's a crime and it's a lie, and we're honest people,"
Carr said.
So they moved back to the Netherlands and got married. They now live in De
Kwakel, a suburb of Amsterdam. Their modest apartment is furnished with
hand-me-downs.
"It's not like life in the Netherlands is a bed of roses," said
Carr, citing the high cost of living in the Amsterdam area and his
struggles to master the Dutch language.
"But at least we are treated as normal people," he said.
"You know what happens when you take away all the discrimination? You
become part of the community. We are `Kwakelaars,' just like anyone else
who lives here. At work, I'm not that gay guy in the corner. I'm Earl
Carr," he said.
At work, when an administrator in the benefits department asked Carr for
the name of his "wife," Carr explained that his partner was a
man.
"There wasn't even a pause," Carr said.
"It's such a non-issue here."
He said his anger toward America has subsided, but not his sense of
alienation.
"America doesn't recognize my relationship with Peter. It considers
us inferior, and that's unacceptable to me," he said. "I'm lucky
I have a Dutch partner and we can live here. Other people aren't so
lucky."
The Netherlands has long prided itself on its tolerant attitudes and
openness to controversial ideas. Prostitution, marijuana and euthanasia
are legal here. But while the Dutch were the first to legalize same-sex
marriages, it did not happen overnight.
The first discussions about "cohabitation contracts" that would
give gays the same legal rights as heterosexual couples began in the
1980s. The idea of marriage for gays was still a long way off.
"The gay movement thought marriage was an old-fashioned institution
that belonged to the heterosexual community. It wasn't an issue,"
said Boris Dittrich, a Dutch legislator who heads the liberal D-66 party.
But when D-66 was invited to join the ruling coalition after its
unexpected success in the 1994 elections, Dittrich, who is openly gay,
decided to make it an issue.
There were immediate protests from the conservative Christian Democratic
party and from the Roman Catholic Church. Their arguments, echoed today in
the U.S. debate, were that marriage was a sacred bond exclusively between
a man and a woman, and that including gays would endanger the institution
of marriage.
As a compromise, the Dutch legislature passed a law in 1997 that
established "registered partnerships." Available to gays and
heterosexuals as an alternative to marriage, it offered pension, and
health and tax benefits to cohabiting couples.
After elections in 1998, D-66's strength had grown, and Dittrich was in a
position to withhold his party's support from the governing coalition
until the other parties agreed to back same-sex marriage legislation. The
groundbreaking law was passed 109-31 less than two years later.
In the three years since the law has been in effect, same-sex marriages
have come to represent about 2 percent of all marriages registered in the
Netherlands. Statistically, it is too early to tell whether the law has
had any impact on how traditional couples view the institution of
marriage.
"We don't talk about gay marriage in the Netherlands. There's only
one kind of marriage and it is open to everyone," said Henk Krol, a
gay activist and publisher who is widely credited with framing the debate
on gay marriage in the Netherlands.
"Marriage is not about white gowns and wedding cakes. It's a legal
contract. If you see gays as equal to straights under the law, then why
keep this institution from them?" he asked.
In recent weeks, Krol has been dispensing advice to gay groups in the U.S.
He generally counsels patience.
"Don't expect that things will change in a few months in your
country," he said.
He said the campaign for gay marriage in the
Netherlands was helped by a gradual approach--legalizing "registered
partnerships," for example--that helped the public get used to the
idea.
"If you can avoid confrontation, it's better," he said.
"The strangest thing for me is that a lot of the opposition comes
from religious groups. Marriage is about people taking care of each other.
It's something that is so close to Christian values [that] if you are a
part of a Christian community you should stand up and say hooray," he
said.
Carr and Stroex say making their marriage official has been a source of
comfort and pride.
"Getting married was a relief. It was a weight off my shoulders. It
was like, finally, there is a place in the world where Peter and I can be
fully functioning normal people," Carr said.
"I think it brought a calmness to our relationship. We argue less.
Marriage gives you a strength, that final commitment in the
relationship," he said.
Stroex added that their marriage license was "only a piece of
paper," but that it influenced profoundly the prism through which the
outside world viewed them and through which they now view themselves.
"It means you have responsibilities. It's like you have finally grown
up," he said.
Homo-Fascism
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