Thursday, 08/09/2001

rule britannia

Evidence that churches in Britain sanctioned same-sex relationships for as long as 500 years has been presented to the Roman Catholic Church. The claim, at a time when the hierarchies in both the Catholic Church and Church of England are trying to come to terms with gay partnerships, is likely to test their insistence that such relationships cannot be countenanced.

My my my. Isn't that like to put the cat among the pigeons? Or rather, it would if the resistance of either organization had anything to do with historical precedent, but since it's more to do with current personal and social tastes and beliefs, then they're just likely to shrug and say that no doubt these were all intense but celibate "friendships" and that the desire to see same-sex relationships accepted has led these researchers into erroneous interpretations.

Yeah, right.

Any road, these burials would be consonant with current developments in Britain.

• The London Partnership Register, to begin operations in September, aims to give same-sex and unmarried heterosexual couples many of the same rights as married couples in local taxation and inheritance issues, among other things. (I do understand the concerns behind why the Register's records won't be made public, but still ... it seems somehow second class. You can't just get the records put into Somerset House, or whatever the modern equivalent of their bureau of records is. You won't be able to see the history in the same way. I wonder if the various registries around the US are considered public records; it strikes me that the particular concerns expressed in London were never even discussed here.)


• Private medical insurers are actually recognizing same-sex couples in the UK, in roughly the same percentage as they recognize common-law heterosexual spouses. Mind, given the structure of the UK's insurance, we're talking about some relatively well-off people -- the UK's principal insurer is the National Health Service, after all -- and one rule the world over is "Don't piss off the rich if you can help it." Still, most insurers in this country don't deal with unmarried adults at all; the other person in a relationship is expected to have their own insurance.

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the last ten ...

12/19/2001: vive la france

12/19/2001: princess, redux

12/19/2001: yemen and rumsfeld

12/18/2001: you're NOT in the army now

12/18/2001: interesting donation

12/18/2001: shame on winn dixie, indeed

12/18/2001: saudi princess

12/17/2001: new resolve

12/17/2001: a victim of the attack ... yeah, right

12/17/2001: polluters ho!