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Loading ...New bid to advance civil unions in Hawaii
04.07.2009 2:25pm EDT
(Honolulu, Hawaii) With time running out in the current session of the Hawaii state legislature, supporters of civil unions who are worried about the stalled bill are trying a new approach.
The civil union bill been languishing in committee and the Democratic leadership has been divided on how to get the measure to a vote on the floor.Now, LGBT rights leaders are proposing a new draft of the bill, adding provisions aimed at making it more acceptable to skittish lawmakers.
The revisions include opening the legislation up to unmarried heterosexual couples. The changes also would explicitly say the bill does not revise the current definition of marriage as a union between a man and a woman.
The new draft would still give couples who enter into civil unions the same rights, benefits and responsibilities as married couples under state law.
The changes will be discussed by Senate Democrats in caucus behind closed doors on Tuesday.
State Sen. Brian Taniguchi (D), chair of the committee where the bill is stalled, told The Honolulu Advertiser that there is some interest in the new bill among senators, though the Senate would have to act by Thursday – the deadline for bills destined for the House.
An altered Senate bill also would have to be approved by the House.
Does 365gay employ any editors or proofreaders at all? Do writers bother to check their work with any kind of grammar checker before they publish it?
The poor quality of writing on this site seriously undermines the credibility of this site as a viable news source.
Dang, how many errors are there in this article? It makes it almost impossible to read when I have to spend an extra minute deciphering what they’re saying.
The word “marriage” should be completely abolished from civil law. Let religions have the that damn word to themselves! Civil marriage is the civil union between two individuals under the law, not recognizable under god. Why not just call it “civil union”?
Marriage should be only the union between two individuals under their god, not recognizable under the law.
Didn’t you know that 365gay uses 3rd graders to write these articles on typewriters, that don’t have spell or grammar checkers. Maybe one day they will catch up & get computers. Obviously, they can’t understand what a proofreader is or does.
We can’t even get a civil union bill passed here in Hawaii. How gay unfriendly can you get? If you’re thinking of a vacation, please don’t come to homophobic Hawaii…the religious nuts hate gay people here.
Hawaii is just too expensive for a vacation anyway.
Germany has had separation from churches for decades when it comes to marriage. Nearly all couples have two ceremonies on their wedding day. First, they go to the Courthouse for the legal wedding and then to their church for the religious one. Why can’t we adopt that here? Since when is marriage “religious” and whose religion is right? Straight couples can go to a Justice of the Peace and get legally married without religion, God, a Bible or Jesus…..or…..just go on a TV show, like “Who Wants To Marry A Millionaire” or “The Bachelor” or etc, etc.
Here’s another thought. How much support would the right wing give to changing the name of “marriage” to “religiously joined” in our laws?
I love that you bring up Germany as an example of how church and state should interact with each other, because in Germany every taxpayer is required to pay taxes to the church, and their only options are: Catholic or Protestant. Maybe we can start that in America while we’re at it!
I was only refering to Germany’s marriage laws. I certainly don’t approve of mandatory “thithing” to any church! Marriage was the subject of the article and my comment. Stick to that and don’t throw “red herrings” into the mix. There is nothing wrong with adopting better ways of doing things and our marriage laws need a definite revamping. Let the church have their own “marriage” rites and let the state have their legal ones.
I too used to think 365gay.ocm had a large staff. Jennifer Vanasco wrote to tell me that she was the sole person on this staff. And that the rest are writers giving freely of their time to help out and the burn out rate for these writers is quite high due to the hurtful and harsh comments aimed at them. This news service exists by a thread so to speak. And it is the only one out there coming up with GLBT news practically 365 days a years except for weekends and except for a well-deserved long break at the end of 2008 from the hurt, vitriol, ridicule and harsh words hurled their way.
I have googled around and it’s hard to find another outfit as comprehensive as this one. Most of what I see out there seem to running blogs rather that actual gay news services. The Washington Blade local DC gay newspaper is online but updates its news only once a week as it comes out only once a week both online and in print.
I see some of the same articles appear say in a major and well known city newspaper like The Washington Post that reported the Iowa marriage equality breakthrough. I use to e-mail in spelling, grammar and usage corrections until I found myself making similar type errors that I didn’t realize until it was too late and then I was embarrassed when I read again what I had posted earlier. I will go out and buy a copy of the Washington Post and it will most likely have the Vermont veto override in it and the fact Vermonters can thus now finally marry in Vermont. The Post article and 365gay.com article on Iowa are saying just about the same things.
Jennifer tries very hard to bring you the news in all its variety. Even major city newspapers have errors in them from time to time.
If you know of any other gay news source out there that more than just a running blog that updates the gay news several times a day Monday through Friday, please let me know.
Errors in the article on a new bid to advance Hawaii civil unions include:
that *there was* some interest among senators.
Taniguchi’s committee could *hold* a hearing.
These are simple missing word errors (as shown by these asterisks in these intentionally small examples as these are the only usage errors I could locate after a thorough “combing through”) and only 2 of them in the entire article. The rest of the grammar and syntax is correct. But this is just one of those occasional articles than one cannot read in haste to be sure one is reading it to get the gist right.
Other than the 2 small errors that proofreading would catch, a line by line reading of the article spells out how the civil unions bill has had provisions added to it to make it more appealing to some of the lawmakers to get it out of committee for a vote on the floor of the Hawaii legislature. (By opening up civil unions to unmarried straight couples and apparently not revising the word “marriage” to mean other than a union between a man and a woman)
And changes in the drafting of the bill will be discussed and that the Senate has to act by a set deadline for bills destined of the House.
Except for a few easily fixed errors, the gist of this article is quite readily understood after a couple of a careful readings.
Errors in past 365gay.com news articles like “pouring over” a reading of a bill when “poring over” a reading of a bill was really intended.
If a whole entire paid staff was involved in turning these articles out, then these many errors that have popped up over the years (most of them readily correctable)would be inexcusable to a college-educated mind or to anyone who knows the rules of correct English spelling, grammar and usage.
But I have been more forgiving since it was made clear to me that this staff consists of one person in charge… with access to volunteer writers who contribute to 365gay.com to give it the variety of articles and writers it has. With that, I turn a blind eye to the practically nonexistent travel section, to the errors that are mostly easily correctable ones, (like he acted “discriminatory” when he acted “discriminatorily” describing “how he acted” as is required by correct English grammar.
A rapid re-sorting in my mind of incorrect grammar, usage and spelling, and of an occasionally miswritten sentence that shifts a meaning around to where it doesn’t quite square with the gist of the article allows me to get through the mistakes. Again inexcusable for a paid staff but somewhat forgivable in the light of that this is actually a small shoestring volunteer operation.
There are a very, very few sources of GLBT news of the much of the world out there running 5 days a week throughout the year and updated through the day.
Hope these clarifications help.
Just read that Jennifer Vanasco is the only staff memeber at 365. If thats so, Jennifer and the contributing staffers are doing a great job.
I now go to 365 dily for information. In case anyone noticed, yesterday, with the news of vermont legislative vote to allow same-sex marriage, CNN.Com never had one mention of it! I ham no longer going to watch CNN.
I complained to them last Thursday that on coverage of the Madonna African adoption, their moderator, Roland martin said a concern for adoption in AAmerica, was if a Gay person wanted to adopt the child. I think CNN is afraid of offending their Southern base by covering Gay civil rights issues.
Well said, Morgan. I appreciate any access to GLBT news that I can get.
…Even if it aint got no good english and its spppelllin’ be tooo damnned hard to understandd! …LOL!
Seriously, keep up the great work Jennifer and “volunteer” staff of 365gay.com
You are unsung heroes & heroines in my book, and you are appreciated.
Even though the word “marriage” has been around from the 13th century in Old English derived from Old French and originally from Latin origins for “marry”
according to my Webster Collegiate Dictionary it is still common used in 2009 in both civil law and in everyday speech whether on the street, in the stores, or on TV and in print.
Marriage was a union between a man and a woman in US dictionaries.
I saw a dictionary when I was in Canada that defines marriage as a union between two adults without mentioning genders.
The use of the word “marriage” in the more modern Canadian sense of the word suits me just fine.
I have not been waiting for 55 years to get civil unioned or whatever the term might be for being joined in a civil union is supposed to be. Any idea what the ocrrect term for being joined to another person in a civil union might be?
I have been waiting for 55 + years to be married to the person of my choice.
Civil unions are not universally understood as the many same-sex couples who got civil unions in NJ unfortunately found out. Some of these couples testified (at an NJ civil union commission hearing) that they have had to explain again and again about their civil unions to every one they had to deal with who the power to make important decisions about their lives.
By contrast, everyone instantly knows what marriage is, no explanations are needed there. Even young children know what the word “married” means in common everyday speech.
Some said that their employers changed their tune when the same persons who said they were joined to the partners in NJ civil unions and were STILL turned down on employee health plans then mentioned that they were first legally married to their partners in MA. Their employer then put them on the company health plan etc.
And you can (if a straight couple) get married without clergy,etc if desired in front of a justice of the peace, town clerk, mayor or whomever is duly authorized to do so by the state where you reside and I imagine it should no different for a same-sex couple in any of the 4 states where a same-sex couple can currently get married MA and CT or when the day it goes in effect arrives IA and VT.
No thanks, I will wait until I can get legally married. I am not interested in civil unions. And do you know of any married straight couples who want to downgrade from legally clear and unquestioned marriage to “iffy” civil unions that employers and insurers may or may not respect?
I’ve loyally hung onto 365gay.com in the past …
But lately I’ve started going to Pink News (UK) … like the BBC, which has more US news and has it quicker than CNN (not to mention it being less biased), Pink News not only has virtually all the US news … it also has gay WORLD news.
Jennifer, you have my sympathies!
I suppose I’ll be embarrassed if I find that Pink News is getting their stories from 365gay.com (chuckle).