Saturday, November 6, 2004
Saskatchewan court legalizes gay marriage - Provincial authorities have the power to marry same-sex couples with or without permission from the courts or the federal government, a judge declared yesterday as she issued a decision legalizing gay marriage in Saskatchewan.
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Thursday, November 4, 2004
AUSTIN, Texas - The Texas Board of Education approved new health textbooks for the state's high school and middle school students Friday after the publishers agreed to change the wording to depict marriage as the union of a man and a woman.
The decision involves two of the biggest textbook publishers and represents another example of Texas exerting its market clout as the nation's second-largest buyer of textbooks. Officials say the decision could affect hundreds of thousands of books in Texas alone.
On Thursday, a board member charged that proposed new books ran counter to a Texas law banning the recognition of gay civil unions because the texts used terms like ``married partners'' instead of ``husband and wife.''
After hearing the debate Thursday, one publisher, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, agreed to include a definition of marriage as a ``lifelong union between a husband and a wife.'' The other publisher, Glencoe/McGraw-Hill, changed phrases such as ``when two people marry'' and ``partners'' to ``when a man and a woman marry'' and ``husbands and wives.''
Board member Terri Leo, a Republican, said she was pleased with the publishers' changes. She had led the effort to get the publishers to change the texts, objecting to what she called ``asexual stealth phrases'' such as ``individuals who marry.''
``Marriage has been defined in Texas, so it should also be defined in our health textbooks that we use as marriage between a man and a woman,'' Leo said.
Saskatchewan court legalizes gay marriage - Provincial authorities have the power to marry same-sex couples with or without permission from the courts or the federal government, a judge declared yesterday as she issued a decision legalizing gay marriage in Saskatchewan.
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Thursday, November 4, 2004
AUSTIN, Texas - The Texas Board of Education approved new health textbooks for the state's high school and middle school students Friday after the publishers agreed to change the wording to depict marriage as the union of a man and a woman.
The decision involves two of the biggest textbook publishers and represents another example of Texas exerting its market clout as the nation's second-largest buyer of textbooks. Officials say the decision could affect hundreds of thousands of books in Texas alone.
On Thursday, a board member charged that proposed new books ran counter to a Texas law banning the recognition of gay civil unions because the texts used terms like ``married partners'' instead of ``husband and wife.''
After hearing the debate Thursday, one publisher, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, agreed to include a definition of marriage as a ``lifelong union between a husband and a wife.'' The other publisher, Glencoe/McGraw-Hill, changed phrases such as ``when two people marry'' and ``partners'' to ``when a man and a woman marry'' and ``husbands and wives.''
Board member Terri Leo, a Republican, said she was pleased with the publishers' changes. She had led the effort to get the publishers to change the texts, objecting to what she called ``asexual stealth phrases'' such as ``individuals who marry.''
``Marriage has been defined in Texas, so it should also be defined in our health textbooks that we use as marriage between a man and a woman,'' Leo said.
