United Church of Christ endorses gay marriage

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Approves resolution for same-sex unions, opposes gender-specific definition

Updated: 1:22 p.m. ET July 4, 2005

ATLANTA – The United Church of Christ’s rule-making body voted overwhelmingly Monday to approve a resolution that endorses same-sex marriage, making it the largest Christian denomination to do so.

The vote is not binding on individual churches, but could cause some churches to leave the fold.

Roughly 80 percent of the members of the church’s General Synod voted to approve the resolution. They debated for about an hour before voting.

On Sunday, a committee of about 50 United Church of Christ representatives gave nearly unanimous approval to the resolution, recommending that the General Synod approve it. It was supported by the UCC’s president, John H. Thomas.

Traditionally strong in New England, the liberal denomination of 1.3 million members has long been supportive of gays and lesbians.

Gender-specific definition rebuffed
The committee also voted against an alternative resolution defining marriage as between one man and one woman. A small group of conservative congregations had proposed that amendment, and suggested that approval of gay marriage could lead to the church’s collapse.

The church was criticized last year for its television advertising campaign featuring a gay couple, among others, being excluded from a church. CBS and NBC rejected the 30-second ads.

In the early 1970s, the UCC became the first major Christian body to ordain an openly gay minister. Twenty years ago, it declared itself to be “open and affirming” of gays and lesbians.

The same-sex resolution was submitted by the Southern California and Nevada Conference. The resolution specified that bisexual and transgender persons merit the same support and protections as gays and lesbians.

UCC churches are autonomous, meaning the General Synod does not create policy for its more than 5,700 congregations.

No hard data exist on how many gays and lesbians are in the UCC.

The Rev. Rebecca Voelkel of Cleveland, national interim director of the UCC Coalition for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Concerns, said about 2,000 people are on the group’s mailing list and about 1,000 clergy or seminarians are gay. The denomination has 10,323 ordained ministers.

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Drag queen says she’s a serious politician

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Italian will be Europe’s first ‘transgender’ member of parliament if elected

Tony Gentile / Reuters

Italian transgender election candidate Vladimir Luxuria, 40, is running for a seat in Italy’s parliament.

Updated: 11:30 a.m. ET Feb 23, 2006

ROME – Vladimir Luxuria will ditch the sequins, feather boas and bouffant wigs when she enters Italy’s parliament. The drag queen says she will be Europe’s first transgender member of parliament. and wants to be seen as a serious politician.

Born Wladimiro Guadagno, the former organizer of Italy’s gay pride parades, considers herself neither male nor female but dresses as a woman and prefers to be referred to as “she.”

Luxuria has shot to national fame by running for parliament where she is practically guaranteed a seat at April’s general election by teaming up with the country’s main communist party.

“I’m going to be the first transgender to get into a parliament in Europe,” Luxuria, 40, told Reuters in an interview.

“It’s a way to say to people: don’t judge me by the way I look, don’t judge me by my sexual orientation. Please, judge me by my ideas.”

Reaching out to gay voters, Communist Refoundation has put her very near the top of its party list. With the party likely to get at least 6 percent of the vote, Luxuria’s place as a lawmaker is assured.

But Luxuria, who stars in an upcoming film playing a Neopolitan transvestite who enters politics, is keen not to be considered a novelty candidate along the lines of porn star Ilona ‘Cicciolina’ Staller who sat in the assembly in the 1980s and was famous for her impromptu stripteases.

‘Parliament is not a theatre’
The drag queen dressed down for a recent news conference, wearing a trouser suit with a  orange jacket and said she intended to attend parliament in similarly conservative but feminine clothes rather than her cabaret attire.

“Parliament is not a theatre, it’s not a discotheque. It’s already revolutionary that a transgender gets into parliament. It wouldn’t be useful to provoke in such a stupid way.”

Luxuria’s political stand for gay rights contrasts sharply with Italy’s deep Catholic roots and the hostility to gays shown by many of its politicians.

Members of the government’s Northern League party regularly rile against what they see as the threat posed by “faggots.”

The European Parliament rejected Italy’s choice for European Commissioner, Rocco Buttiglione, a member of the Catholic UDC party, because of his belief that homosexuality was a sin.

Despite attacks from government supporters, Luxuria jokes that she has something in common with image-conscious Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who is lampooned in Italy for apparently wearing built-up shoes that make him look taller.

“He wears make-up, like me, maybe a little bit less but he does. He wears heels, so sometimes, at least aesthetically we have more in common than he would think.”

A new view of Italy?
The center-left ‘Union’ coalition, led by former European Commission President Romano Prodi, has pledged to establish some form of civil union for homosexual couples, although gay groups say the wording is not clear enough.

Luxuria said she will work in parliament to establish full legal recognition of such unions, but stressed that she is not pushing for adoption rights for gays, such as exist in Spain, because “Italian society isn’t ready to accept it.”

While Berlusconi’s center-right coalition, campaigning on traditional family values, hopes that Italians will be put off by the sexually ambiguous Luxuria, the center left hopes her presence will demonstrate a modern, tolerant view of Italy.

Last year an earring-wearing, openly gay man, Nichi Vendola, was voted governor of the southern region of Puglia, delivering victory for Refoundation and humiliation for Berlusconi’s party.

“I think Italians are a bit more mature than many of the politicians who claim to represent them,” said Luxuria.

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