Independent article: Australian Finance Minister Penny Wong Says Her Partner Is Having Her Baby But Same Sex Marriage Still illegal In Australia.

Lesbian minister’s pregnancy fails to sway PM on gay marriage

By Charlotte McDonald-Gibson

Wednesday, 10 August 2011

Penny Wong, Australia’s openly gay Finance minister, is expecting a child with her partner Sophie Allouache, who conceived through IVF

• 
• Australia’s finance minister announced yesterday that she is expecting a child with her female partner, but although Prime Minister Julia Gillard offered her warmest congratulations, she refused to budge in her opposition to gay marriage.

Penny Wong’s partner, Sophie Allouache, conceived through IVF using donor sperm and is expecting in December. The news has reignited debate over same-sex partnership in the country.

There are increasing calls for Ms Gillard’s centre-left Labor Party to lift its ban on gay marriages at their conference in December, but while the Premier said she was “very pleased” for Ms Wong, 42, and Ms Allouache, 35, she stood firm in her view that wedlock should be reserved for a man and a woman.

“Clearly there are strong views about same-sex marriage in the community,” Ms Gillard said. “There are strong views in the political party I lead, and we’ll have a debate at national conference about those strongly held views. I’ve made my views clear.”

Ahead of the Labor Party conference, Ms Wong – the only openly-gay member of Ms Gillard’s cabinet – has supported changing the party’s stance, but she stressed yesterday that she did not want her unborn child to become part of the argument.

“You have a child because you want a family and you want to have the opportunity of raising a child together. You don’t have a child to make a political statement,” she told The Sydney Morning Herald. “I don’t want to engage in the policy debate about these issues in the context of something that is so deeply personal and so lovely. Children need to be loved, nurtured and respected, and our child will be.”

Although there is a strong socially-conservative element in the Australian electorate, particularly in rural areas, Ms Gillard is looking increasingly out of step on the issue. At the weekend, Tasmania became the seventh of Australia’s eight states where the Labor Party has passed a motion supporting gay marriage. There is also increasing public support for gay marriage, which has recently been legalised in six US states. Various polls in Australia have put support for gay marriage as high as 70 per cent.

There were congratulations from across the political spectrum yesterday for Ms Wong and her partner, while Peter Furness, of the Australian Marriage Equality group, used the opportunity to highlight the importance of marriage. “Marriage can benefit children by providing them with a greater sense of security and recognition,” he told The Age newspaper.

But there are still some right-wing figures determined to make themselves heard. “She needn’t have made it public,” said Fred Nile, an MP from New South Wales and leader of the Christian Democrat Party. “It just promotes their lesbian lifestyle and

WNBA Star Sheryl Swoopes Announces She Is No Longer A Lesbian & She Is Marrying A Man.

Swoopes Marrying Man After Coming Out

• By: Jenée Desmond-Harris | Posted: August 8, 2011

 

Sheryl Swoopes and fiancé Chris Unclesho (AfterEllen.com)

Six years after three-time WNBA MVP Sheryl Swoopes came out, announcing her relationship with then-girlfriend Alisa Scott, she has announced that she’s engaged … to a man. Cue the confusion. She’s been called everything from “no longer” a lesbian to NSGAA (“not so gay after all”). The Huffington Post’s Maya Rupert says this approach erroneously relies on Swoopes’ current relationship status to define her identity. And if you’re more familiar with sports than you are with the nuances of sexual orientation, she has a basketball analogy for you.

Read a few excerpts here:

This conflation of a person’s current romantic relationship with their identity is a big part of why the “B” in LGBT has remained virtually invisible in the sports world and in the broader culture …

Interestingly, as I’ve found myself defending Swoopes in the wake of her announcement, I’ve noticed that the argument is shockingly similar to another point of controversy in professional basketball. In order to understand Swoopes’ identity in a way that can envision this type of fluidity, you have to understand the role and value of a combo guard.

A combo guard is a guard who combines skills associated with both a point guard (excellent ball-handling and an ability to make plays and set up teammates to score) and a shooting guard (primary scorer on the floor). A combo guard is often listed as a point guard, but does not play as a pure or typical point guard …

But it’s a mistake to think that we can take a snapshot of a person’s relationship at a given moment and assume we can tell their identity, just like it’s a mistake to think we can take a snapshot of a person’s role on a court at a given moment and determine their position. We don’t ask for that type of rigidity in basketball, and we cannot ask for it in identity.