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    November 21, 2006

    Israel recognizes gay marriages

    Posted by: Chris

    Israel's Supreme Court has ordered the government to recognize civil marriage licenses issued by other countries to gay couples. The landmark ruling doesn't mean that gay couples can marry in Israel, since even civil marriage licenses there are controlled by religious authorities, but it does mean full marriage rights for Israeli gay couples married abroad:

    Moshe Negbi, a legal expert, said the court's decision is mostly symbolic because gay couples in Israel already had many of the rights of heterosexual partnerships. The significant changes are that they will now get the same tax breaks as a married couple and be able to adopt children, Negbi said. Israeli law stipulates a couple must be married to adopt a child.

    "The marriages of same-sex couples who marry in places like Canada where the law recognizes such marriages, will also be recognized in Israel, and they will be registered as married here," Negbi said.

    Civil marriages cannot be performed in Israel because of the rabbinate's monopoly on family law. But couples married in civil ceremonies abroad have all the rights of a married couple, and their marriages are registered here. The court uses the term "register" instead of "recognition" to avoid religious criticism of the ruling, Negbi said.

    The ruling drew predictably sharp reaction from orthodox Jewish leaders.:

    "We don't have a Jewish state here. We have Sodom and Gomorrah here," said Moshe Gafni, an ultra-Orthodox lawmaker.

    "I assume that every sane person in the state of Israel, possibly the entire Jewish world, is shocked, because the significance is ... the destruction of the family unit in the state of Israel," Gafni told Israel's Army Radio.

    Opposition to gay rights is one of the few issues that actually unites Jewish, Muslim and Christian leaders in the Middle East, so the court ruling is an important civil rights victory over all three. How ironic that a country that lets religious leaders control marriage entirely now offers dramatically greater recognition for same-sex couples than the supposedly secular U.S. government. Apparently it's easier to separate synagogue and state than it is churches — not to mention mosques.

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