Tag: courts

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Gay Man Gets Refugee Status In South Korea

A Pakistani man who fled his country for fear of being persecuted because of his sexual orientation should be granted refugee status here, Yonhap News reported Sunday. A Seoul court said Sunday that it has ruled in favor of the Pakistani complainant, who is gay, and sought to overturn an earlier government decision not to recognize his refugee status here. The individual had petitioned the government for refugee status in February of last year. The Justice Ministry rejected his application four months later, however, saying his petition did not meet the criteria of a "well-founded fear of being persecuted" as stipulated by the U.N. convention on refugees. The Seoul Administrative Court reversed the ministry's decision, saying that should he be repatriated "there is a high likelihood that the plaintiff will be subject to persecution by the Pakistani government and Muslim society simply because he is gay." "My life, as a homosexual, was in danger in my country," the plaintiff told Yonhap News Agency on condition of anonymity due to sensitivity of the issue. "My family and relatives were my enemy. They said I was insulting my family, Islam and my country and threatened that they would report me to police," he said. South Korea signed onto the U.N. Convention and Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees in 1992. Since then, 2,413 foreigners have applied for refugee status and 145 were granted asylum. The first approval was in 2001 for an Ethiopian male.

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Gay Adoption in Florida

A circuit court judge in Miami–Dade County took a bold step to increase the rights of homosexuals throughout the state by allowing them to adopt children.

The judge issued her 53–page decision to effectively overturn a statute established more than three decades ago. For now, the judge’s decision will only apply in her district. Because the ruling is being appealed by the state, the decision will be reconsidered to apply to the entire state of Florida.

We have our fingers crossed that the Miami judge’s ruling is upheld by the higher court. Who’s to say who is fit to be a parent until a person actually becomes a parent?

We understand the Constitution grants states all the powers not specifically allotted to the federal government, but we don’t think denying a certain group the ability to raise children is in keeping with our country’s concept and tradition of liberty.

Arguments condemning two people of the same sex raising a child are poorly reasoned and usually based on antiquated ideals.

To deem people unfit for parenthood before they have children is like telling fifth graders they will never be smart enough to get into college. There is simply no way to know at that point.

We aren’t advocating children for all. Adoption processes require potential parents to show they are capable of properly caring for a human life.

Our point is that it’s ignorant to exclude a single group of people from a public service, especially when requirements are already in place to weed out those who don’t deserve children.

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eHarmony will go gay

eHarmony next year will launch a matching service called Compatible Partners, which will be marketed to gays and lesbians.

The Pasadena, Calif.-based company’s announcement was the result of a settlement reached today with the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office, which claimed in a lawsuit eHarmony violated the state’s Law Against Discrimination by not offering a same-sex matching service.

The New Jersey regulator got involved following a complaint by Eric McKinley, a gay match-seeker in the state, who now will be provided a free, one-year membership to Compatible Partners.

In addition, the settlement calls for eHarmony Inc. to pay McKinley $5,000, and to pay New Jersey’s Division on Civil Rights $50,000 to cover investigation-related administrative costs.

eHarmony faces another suit in California. It’s unclear how this settlement will affect that case.

“Now that we’re entering the same-sex matching market, we fail to see what the [California] plaintiffs could achieve through further litigation,” said Antone Johnson, a vice president of legal affairs at eHarmony.

eHarmony was founded in 2000 by Dr. Neil Clark Warren, a clinical psychologist with once-close ties to the Christian evangelical group Focus on the Family.

eHarmony offers its services in the U.S., Australia, Britain and Canada.

Its website says that 236 eHarmony members marry every day in the U.S. as a result of being matched on the site using eHarmony's patented "Compatibility Matching System."

With the settlement, eHarmony denied violating the law, claiming its business model has been based on its expertise. The company said it has researched thousands of opposite-sex marriages to understand what makes opposite-sex couples compatible.

Registration on the Compatible Partners site, slated to launch by March 31, will be free for the first 10,000 users registering within one year of its launch. After that, subscription pricing for the new site will be equal to that for eHarmony.com.

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Gay Rape Serial Killer Gets Life

A man who raped and murdered eight young men over a 10-year period has been sentenced to eight consecutive life sentences

Police said Ronald Dominique lured his victims with the promise of sex in exchange for money, or by showing them a picture of a good-looking woman, supposedly his wife, and saying he wanted them to have sex with her. Once he got them to his house, he would ask to tie them up. If they refused, he allowed them to leave. If they agreed, he raped and then strangled or suffocated them. Many of his victims' bodies were found dumped in sugar cane fields, often without shoes, a connection that helped police tie the cases together. Dominique - from Bayou Blue, a small Cajun settlement about 60 miles south-west of New Orleans - was arrested in December 2006 after the ten-year killing spree. At the time, authorities said he confessed to raping and murdering about two dozen young men in four Louisiana parishes. He pleaded guilty to eight murders in a deal that saw him avoid the death penalty and was sentenced to eight consecutive life terms in prison. "He knew nothing about them or their families and he callously killed the victims and left a lifetime of pain as their legacy." Chris Cunningham, the brother of Kurt Cunningham, one of Dominique's victims, said in court: "I'll miss him to the day I die. I hope hell finds you fast." Mr Rhodes said: "I told the families of the victims I was confident we could get a guilty verdict on all eight counts (of murder). "I was confident we could get the death penalty on all eight counts. "I was also confident it would be tied up in appeals for 12 to 15 years or more." RELATED INFORMATION Ronald Dominique

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2 Men Charged with Sodomy in N.C.

By: Mark Kernes   RALEIGH, N.C. – It's been only five years since the U.S. Supreme Court delivered its opinion in Lawrence v. Texas, which decriminalized consensual sodomy between adults, but apparently, police in West Raleigh, N.C., haven't yet been made aware of the ruling. It all started when Nelson Sloan called 911 in the early morning hours of May 24, claiming he'd been attacked in his apartment in Grand Manor Court by Ryan Flynn. After investigation, the cops charged Flynn with simple assault for biting Sloan – and with threatening to disembowel Sloan and show him his (Sloan's) innards. But they also charged both men with committing an "infamous crime against nature" – North Carolina's legal term for sodomy. This looks like a case of a consensual act that may have gotten out of hand," police Capt. T.D. Hardy told the Raleigh News & Observer. "The law is still on the books. Our detectives got involved in it last night and decided this was the best thing to do. What the D.A.'s office will do with it, I don't know." But although the Raleigh Police Department's attorney, Dawn Bryant, told officers in August 2003, two months after the Supreme Court's ruling in Lawrence, that they could continue charging adults who performed sodomy in public, the "crime against nature" law remains in the state's criminal code and, said Bryant, "The decision only applies to private conduct." The good news is, Wake County prosecutors dropped the sodomy charges against both men a week later, with Assistant District Attorney Adam Moyers concluding that the blowjobs and/or anal sex between the men were consensual and private. The bad news is, Sloan still had to pay $450 to a bail bondsman to get released from jail, and though he's asked for a refund, it's unlikely that he'll get it. The further bad news is, though many North Carolina district attorneys have stopped prosecuting the sodomy law, State Sen. Ellie Kinnaird (D- Carrboro) has tried for years to rescind the statute. "I press it every year," Kinnaird said shortly after the arrests. "It would be politically difficult, but that doesn't matter. It's unconstitutional." "I couldn't care less what these guys do," said Joe Furmick, the magistrate who set Sloan's bail at $3,000. "I'm with the old Victorian lady who said, 'I don't care what people do as long as they don't do it in the street and scare the horses.' But you don't want me to decide which laws to enforce and which not to. My opinion shouldn't enter into it." Apparently, the "veteran Wake County magistrate" wasn't (and perhaps isn't) aware that it's every citizen's (and certainly every judicial officer's) duty not to obey laws that are unconstitutional.