Vancouver's first gay married couple reflects on B.C.'s legalization of same-sex marriage, 20 years later

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Tom Graff and Antony Porcino married on July 8, 2003 just 

hours after the ruling

Michelle Gomez · CBC News · Posted: Jul 08, 2023 

Tom Graff and Antony Porcino stand outside their Vancouver apartment. They were the first Vancouver couple to get married when same-sex marriage was legalized in B.C. on July 8, 2003. (Baneet Braich/CBC)

That's how Tom Graff and Antony Porcino described how they were feeling, to reporters, on their wedding day exactly 20 years ago, on July 8, 2003.

It was also the day B.C. lifted its ban on same-sex marriage. 

Graff and Porcino were the first gay couple to get married in Vancouver. Two decades later, they say they are just as in love.

"Those words still ring very true," said Porcino in an interview with CBC News at the couple's Vancouver apartment. 

"It seems like yesterday that we just got married, because I like being married," Graff said.

WATCH | Tom Graff and Anthony Porcino recount wedding hours after B.C. legalizes same-sex marriage: 

Tom Graff and Anthony Porcino were the first same-sex couple to be legally married in Vancouver. After 20 years of legal marriage and 31 years together, they reflect on what being husbands mean to them.

The couple recalls waiting in anticipation for the court decision on Jul. 8, 2003. Ultimately, B.C. became the second province in Canada to legalize same-sex marriage.

"I burst out crying. I couldn't talk and my heart was bursting," said Graff.

They rushed to get a marriage licence that day, and were married in front of the Vancouver courthouse within a few hours, surrounded by friends and media.

• Vancouver seen as a safe haven for LGBTQ people from around the world

• B.C. bishop relieved after Anglican Church gives dioceses choice to perform LGBT unions

Marriage meant having the same legal standing as other couples, said Porcino, including the right to visit each other in the hospital and to take marriage leave from work. 

But more than anything, marriage meant feeling pride in their relationship and a sense of belonging in wider society. 

Graff says 20 years ago, it was difficult in some situations for him to even mention that he lived with a man. 

"I didn't know what it was like to get out of the back of the bus. I didn't know I felt like I was in the back of the bus that much," said Graff. 

Cheering, honking, champagne at White Spot

Graff recalls people on the street congratulating them after the wedding. And people in cars, who were listening to the live radio broadcast of the wedding, were honking. 

"It just made the whole thing that much more both surreal, but impactful," said Porcino. "Because we knew so many people were interested and so many people were watching and hearing." 

Tom Graff and Antony Porcino during their wedding ceremony on July 8, 2003. They were wed by Tim Stevenson, the first openly gay minister to be ordained in Canada. (CBC archives)

Word got out that the couple was headed to White Spot to celebrate, and Graff said the establishment filled up. He recalls staff even brought out champagne. 

"I never thought they would serve champagne at a White Spot," said Graff. 

20 years later

Porcino says since 2003, he has witnessed same-sex marriage become increasingly normalized in B.C. and across Canada. 

"It's so wonderful to know that for the next generation, it's the norm for them," he said. 

The couple had been together for 11 years before their wedding. Porcino says being legally married has made a world of difference. 

"It actually was a very physical feeling to me that I no longer had to fight to have my relationship recognized," said Porcino. 

Tom Graff and Antony Porcino look at their wedding photos in their Vancouver apartment on July 8, 2023. The couple were together 11 years before legally marrying just hours after B.C. lifted its ban on same-sex marriage 20 years ago to the day. (Baneet Braich/CBC)

Porcino says he is happy future generations won't have to fight to constantly defend their relationship like he and Graff did. 

And their advice to a long and happy marriage? 

Saying 'I love you' every day. 

As uncertainty looms in Halifax, Nova Scotia town to host first-ever Pride parade

HALIFAX — With uncertainty looming over Halifax’s Pride parade this year, smaller communities in Nova Scotia are stepping up and opening their doors during what some say is a pivotal time for LGBTQ rights.

Lunenburg County Pride is hosting the first-ever Pride parade in Bridgewater on the province’s South Shore on Sunday.

The parade will be followed by two after parties and a week of events for all ages, including a senior social, flag raising, drag queen story time, comedy night, movie night, dog show, and drag show and dance. 

Lunenburg County Pride chair Steve Ellis said the parade has about 40 entries and will likely last about an hour.

With the Halifax Pride parade up in the air, he said organizers of the Bridgewater parade are encouraging people to make the roughly one-hour trek to the South Shore event. 

“When things started to change with Halifax Pride, we thought it was an opportunity to give people from the city a place to go to celebrate Pride in case there’s no parade there or in addition to it,” Ellis said.

The Halifax Pride parade is slated to take place on July 23, yet a lack of communication from parade organizers and the abrupt cancellation of a community information meeting last week has cast doubt on whether it will go ahead. 

Halifax Pride organizers did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Saturday. 

The uncertainty in Halifax comes as Pride organizations in Canada face increasing threats both online and in person. 

Anti-LGBTQ protesters have come out to oppose events such as child-friendly drag performances — including in Kentville, N.S.

It’s put security top of mind for Pride organizers across the country, with a heavy police presence becoming increasingly common at parades. 

The northern Ontario city of Timmins budgeted for security this year — a first in the parade’s decade-long history. 

Lunenburg County Pride has been working closely with local police and the town to ensure the safety of all parade organizers, participants and attendees, Ellis said. 

“We are cognizant that some people within our community view that as controversial given that some Pride parades have asked police not to attend,” he said. “But for us, this is our first parade. We’re in a rural area. We know the climate that we’re currently in and we wanted to have that protection.”

Lunenburg County Pride was founded in 2016 and has added new events each year, including this year’s parade.

Meanwhile, Pride Cape Breton Society is still accepting submissions for its Pride parade scheduled for Aug. 5. 

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 8, 2023. 

Brett Bundale, The Canadian Press

Georgia Pride festival in Tbilisi stormed by right-wing protesters

Published
9 July

IMAGE SOURCE,

Image caption,

Protesters broke through a police cordon to stop the Pride event

JULY 9, 2023

Up to 2,000 anti-LGBT protesters stormed a gay pride festival in Georgia's capital Tbilisi on Saturday, forcing its cancellation.

The right-wing protesters, who included Orthodox Christian clergy, scuffled with police, rushed the stage and burned rainbow flags.

The organisers and Georgia's president blamed anti-LGBT hate speech that preceded the event, and said the police had failed to protect festival-goers.

Homophobia remains rife in Georgia.

President Salome Zurabishvili said the ruling Georgian Dream party had failed to condemn its followers who had openly incited aggression towards LGBT activists.

Interior Minister Alexander Darakhvelidze, however, argued that the large area had been difficult to police.

"This was an open area, participants of the protest managed to bypass the security and find other ways to enter the event area," he said.

"However we managed to evacuate the participants of the Pride festival and organisers from the area, no one was harmed," he added.

The event's participants were bussed to safety, Reuters news agency reported.

IMAGE SOURCE,S

Image caption,

The authorities say the event's large open venue made it hard to keep protesters out

Far-right protesters also violently disrupted a Pride festival in Tbilisi in 2021, attacking journalists and LGBT activists.

The 2023 Pride organiser, Mariam Kvaratskhelia, said there had been a "mass mobilisation" of far-right groups ahead of this year's event. The groups had been "openly inciting violence", she said.

"We've been telling the ministry of interior and the police to start investigation immediately but they did not do it," she told Reuters.

She also alleged the protest was a "co-ordinated action between the government and the radical groups... in order to sabotage the EU candidacy of Georgia" - although she did not provide any specific evidence for this claim.

Opponents accuse the Georgian Dream government of leaning towards Moscow, despite Georgia's long-standing ambition to join the EU.

Mass protests in March turned violent over a draft version of a Russian-style law that would class non-government and media groups as "foreign agents" if they received more than 20% of their funds from abroad.

The clashes with police outside parliament led to the government dropping the bill.

Pride Week marked in Georgia as government escalates homophobia

Books and publishers have become the latest target in what's seen as a government-led homophobic campaign.

Nini Gabritchidze Jul 7, 2023

One of the private events held during this year's Pride Week (Facebook; Tbilisi Pride

Georgia has been seeing rising levels of government-led anti-LGBT discourse, a trend that is peaking as the country's queer activists celebrate Pride Week.

For several months now, the Georgian government and ruling party leaders have been actively scaremongering about what they see as Western trends of targeting children with "LGBT propaganda".

The phenomenon entered a new stage in June when pro-government media and government officials, among others, raised alarms over the contents of the local McDonald's franchise's Happy Meals for children.

The package came with a booklet from the Little People, Big Dreams series that includes illustrated celebrity biographies meant to inspire children. The one that touched the nerve of Georgian conservatives featured the biography of Sir Elton John, an openly-gay British musician.

The fact that the biography mentioned the singer's marriage to another man was seized on by Georgian officials as proof of "LGBT propaganda" being purveyed among children.

"In the booklets, they sneaked LGBT propaganda to children," Irakli Kobakhidze, chairman of the ruling Georgian Dream party told reporters on June 21.

And the McDonald's drama was only the beginning. Next came Sulakauri Publishing, one of the country's largest publishing houses and owner of its own bookshop chain. Starting in late June, the company saw a sudden rise in conservative attacks - both on social media and directly at their office - accusing them of various sorts of "propaganda."

One of these books, Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls, also a compilation of real biographies of women by Elena Favilli and Francesca Cavallo, and an international bestseller, was similarly identified as "LGBT propaganda".

Another is a collection of fairy tales by 17th-century French author Charles Perrault. It has been labeled "incest propaganda," presumably for the tale Donkeyskin.

"I think, this fact, too, was alarming," Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili said about Sulakauri Publishing during his parliamentary address on June 30 - after lashing out at "LGBT propaganda" that has already "entered kindergartens" in the West and attacking McDonald's "campaign" as "unacceptable".

The Georgian literary community rallied around Sulakauri Publishing, which vowed to withstand the attacks in the name of protecting the freedom of expression.

But the growing instrumentalization of what is viewed as "political homophobia" has become a matter of wider concern.

Some see the attacks on Sulakauri and McDonald's as a prelude to the revival of an "anti-LGBT propaganda" bill which was proposed by government allies in parliament in spring but not supported by the ruling party at the time.

With the advent of Pride Week, the idea has returned to the discourse, its main advocate being the Georgian Orthodox Church. Garibashvili, too, did not rule out new legislation during his last parliamentary address.

(Salome Zourabichvili, Georgia's more liberal-minded but figurehead president, pledged to veto the bill, should it pass, though her veto can easily be overridden by the ruling force.)

The ruling party is likely pursuing several other aims, including rallying conservative voters for the crucial parliamentary elections due to be held in fall 2024. Indeed, the rhetoric has been actively used to target not only queer activist groups but also discredit political opponents and a wider spectrum of younger critics.

The rhetoric has also helped Georgian leaders maintain their close ties with the European and American right. There have been reports that Hungary's right-wing government might use its veto power to push EU member countries towards granting Georgia membership candidacy later this year.

Safety concerns for Pride Week

The intensifying attacks have raised concerns about the safety of Pride Week events organized in Georgia during July 2-8.

There has been no attempt to stage any public pro-LGBT events since the brutal homophobic pogroms two years ago, and this year's events are closed. Nonetheless, various conservative groups have threatened to disrupt Pride Fest on July 8, the event culminating the week.

Graffiti calling for an anti-LGBT gathering on the same day has proliferated on Tbilisi's streets recently. And have been reports that Georgia's two largest commercial banks blocked the accounts of violent groups trying to raise funds for their anti-Pride mobilization.

The Georgian public "will do everything, in peaceful ways, to prevent this debauchery, this attempt to organize a massive Sodom and Gomorrah," proclaimed Vato Shakarashvili, a conservative politician close to the ruling party at a July 6 briefing.

(Shakarashvili, just like Prime Minister Garibashvili before him, cited "official statistics" in France and the U.S. about the "dramatically increased" number of young people identifying themselves with the LGBT community, attributing it to propaganda.)

Tbilisi Pride, the group organizing the events, has had to issue safety recommendations amid fears of violence.

Last year, police detained over two dozen right-wing activists in an effort to protect similar privately held Pride celebrations.

But the organizers of the anti-Pride pogroms on July 5, 2021 have never faced justice. This, coupled with the widespread belief that the government is working in tandem with these violent groups, has significantly reduced LGBT people's sense of physical safety.

Nini Gabritchidze is a Tbilisi-based journalist.

5 Jehovah’s Witness members   STR8 MEN charged with sex crimes after grand jury investigation




Cara Sapida
July 7, 2023·

Pennsylvania Attorney General Michelle Henry announced five more members of the Jehovah’s Witness organization have been charged with sex crimes. The arrests come after a grand jury investigation, where 14 men have been charged over the last year.

“All five men have the trust of the victims and their families. And all five men were members of the Jehovah’s Witness congregation, and many of them gained access to the victims through this organization,” Henry said in a Friday press conference.

Two of the men are from Western Pennsylvania.

Terry Booth, who is currently living in Panama City, Florida, was charged in Allegheny County. Shaun Sheffer, of Butler County, was also charged.

Investigators say Booth gained the trust of a 16-year-old boy when they were members of the former Kingdom Hall in White Oak.

The grand jury indictment says Booth took it upon himself to “mentor” the teen, which included inappropriate sexual touching at first. Investigators say the two had sexual discussions which Booth claimed were spiritual guidance. He is also accused of providing alcohol before sexually assaulting the teen.

Sheffer is accused of raping a girl between 50 and 75 times, starting when she was 7 years old.

Attorney General Henry calls the crimes sad and disturbing, saying they used their faith community and family to find their victims. “I am thankful to the courageous survivors who are willing to share their horrific abuse, I am inspired by their strength,” Henry said.

We reached out to the Jehovah’s Witnesses leadership. They gave WPXI this statement:

“We are not permitted by law to comment on specific matters arising out of the grand jury investigation. That having been said, the news of someone being sexually abused, whether a child or an adult, sickens us. Child sexual abuse in particular is a twisted act of evil. That is why for decades Jehovah’s Witnesses have gone to great lengths to educate and warn parents through our publications, meetings, and website, about how to protect their children in a variety of circumstances. We also are quick to support and offer pastoral care to those affected, while working to ensure that unrepentant perpetrators are removed from the congregation. Anyone who has been victimized has the full support of the congregation to report the matter to the authorities.”

Rescued Australian man and dog who were adrift 3 months in Pacific set to arrive in Mexican port

HE HAD SOMEONE TO TALK TOO AND CARE FOR OR HE COULD HAVE GONE MAD


By The Associated Press
Tuesday, July 18, 2023

MANZANILLO, Mexico (AP) — An Australian sailor who was rescued by a Mexican tuna boat after being adrift at sea with his dog for three months will step foot on dry land Tuesday for the first time since their ordeal began.

Atun Tuny via AP / Grupomar
In this photo provided by Grupomar/Atun Tuny, Australian Tim Shaddock sits with his dog Bella after being rescued by a Mexican tuna boat in international waters, after being adrift with his dog for three months. Haddock and his dog, Bella were aboard his incapacitated catamaran Aloha Toa some 1,200 miles from land when they were rescued.






MANZANILLO, Mexico (AP) — An Australian sailor who was rescued by a Mexican tuna boat after being adrift at sea with his dog for three months will step foot on dry land Tuesday for the first time since their ordeal began.

Timothy Lyndsay Shaddock, 54, was aboard his crippled catamaran Aloha Toa in the Pacific Ocean about 1,200 miles (1,930 kilometers) from land when the crew of the fishing boat from the Grupomar fleet spotted them, the company said in a statement.

Shaddock and his dog, Bella, were in a “precarious” state when found, lacking provisions and shelter, and the tuna boat’s crew gave them medical attention, food and hydration, the company said.

Grupomar did not say what day Shaddock was rescued or when he had started his voyage. However, the Australian and his dog were expected to arrive late Tuesday morning on the Maria Delia Tuna in the Mexican port of Manzanillo, which is about 210 miles (337 kilometers) west of Mexico City.

Antonio Suárez Gutiérrez, Grupomar’s founder and president, said he was proud of his boat’s captain, Oscar Meza Oregón, and crew, praising them for their humanity in saving the life of someone in trouble.

Shaddock told Australia’s Nine News television that he and his dog had survived on raw fish and rain water after a storm damaged his vessel and wiped out its electronics.

“I’ve been through a very difficult ordeal at sea and I’m just needing rest and good food because I’ve been alone at sea a long time,“ a thin and bearded Shaddock said in video broadcast by Nine on Sunday night Australian time.

“Otherwise, I’m in very good health,” Shaddock added.

The Sydney resident and his dog set sail from the Mexican city of La Paz for French Polynesia in April, but bad weather struck within weeks and left the vessel adrift, Sydney’s The Daily Telegraph newspaper reported.

In photographs of the rescue provided by Grupomar to The Associated Press, a smiling, bearded and thin Shaddock is seen with a blood pressure cuff around his arm, holding a box of pain medication inside the fishing boat’s cabin. In others, Bella is stretched out on the deck. The catamaran floated nearby without a visible sail.

Israeli-Russian researcher Elizabeth Tsurkov held captive in Iraq since March

PublishedShare

IMAGE SOURCE,ELIZABETH TSURKOV

Image caption,

Elizabeth Tsurkov is a PhD student at Princeton University

An Israeli-Russian researcher who went missing in Iraq in March is being held captive by a Shia militia, says Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Elizabeth Tsurkov, a PhD student at Princeton University in the United States, was conducting research in Baghdad when she was kidnapped.

"We hold Iraq responsible for her safety and well-being," Mr Netanyahu's office said.

Ms Tsurkov is being held by Kataib Hezbollah, according to Israel.

It did not specify what the group's demands were.

Kataib Hezbollah (Brigades of the Party of God) is a powerful Iraqi Shia militia that gets financial and military support from Iran. The US has designated the group as a terrorist organisation since 2009.

Israel said the matter was being handled by "relevant parties... out of concern" for Ms Tsurkov's "security and well-being".

Iraq and Israel do not share diplomatic relations. Last year, Iraq's parliament passed a law that criminalises any attempt to normalise ties with Israel, which it has never recognised.

Ms Tsurkov's family said in a statement that they hold "the Iraqi government as directly responsible for her safety", the Washington Post reported.

Ms Tsurkov entered Iraq on her Russian passport, Mr Netanyahu's office said.

The New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy, a Washington-based think tank where Ms Tsurkov is a fellow, said she last contacted them in March and that they later learnt from sources of her kidnap by a "pro-Iranian militia".

"Our first instinct was to shout about her disappearance on the internet, in the media and on these pages," the institute said in a statement in its magazine, adding that it decided not to do so because of her family's wishes and in the hope of a quick resolution.

According to Ms Tsurkov's website, her research focuses on the Levant - a historical term that refers to a large geographical region including present-day Israel, Syria and other areas - and "the Syrian uprising and civil war".

New Lines said Ms Tsurkov's situation was complicated by that fact that she was "an outspoken critic" of the three countries that may be involved in negotiations for her release: Israel, Iran and Russia.

"All of us feel that the United States needs to be involved in some way in helping [Ms Tsurkov]," it said, pointing to her involvement with New Lines and Princeton.

In a statement posted on Twitter, Princeton said: "We are deeply concerned for her safety and well-being, and we are eager for her to be able to rejoin her family and resume her studies."

The US, Russia, Iran and Iraq have not officially commented yet.