Nigeria's Sharia police arrest 12 over 'gay wedding'

Article Source: Yahoo.com

Kano (Nigeria) (AFP) - Twelve young men were arrested in the north Nigerian city of Kano for allegedly planning a gay wedding, the Islamic law-enforcement agency, the Hisbah, said on Tuesday.

The suspects, most of them teenagers, were detained on Monday at a popular resort on the outskirts of the city, said the head of the Hisbah, Aminu Daurawa.

Homosexuality is banned under federal law in Nigeria, where last year new legislation was passed outlawing same-sex marriages and the promotion of civil unions.

In northern states, where Sharia runs parallel to the state and federal justice system, homosexuality is punishable by death, although the sentence is rarely, if ever, enforced.

"We have 12 men in custody, including the bride. We arrested them at the venue of a planned gay wedding," Daurawa told AFP.

"We got information of the wedding four days earlier and our men stormed the venue while the wedding was about to start."

Many guests escaped during the raid, he added.

But one of the participants, 18-year-old Faruk Maiduguri, told reporters at the Hisbah offices that he and his friends were only celebrating his birthday.

"It was my birthday ‎party, not a gay wedding," he said in tears.

Daurawa said the suspects, who came from Kano, the northern cities of Maiduguri, Kaduna and Bauchi, and Ibadan and Osogbo in the southwest, "looked and acted feminine", which prompted their arrest.

It was not clear whether they would be charged but their families had been summoned, he added.

In January last year, more than a dozen men suspected of organizing a gay wedding were arrested and charged in Bauchi by the Sharia agency.

Some of them were discharged while others were released on bail.

Nigeria's Same Sex Marriage (Prohibition) Act carries penalties of up to 14 years in jail for anyone confirmed to be in a gay union.

The government said the legislation reflected public opinion in religiously conservative Nigeria, which is split almost evenly between a mainly Muslim north and predominantly Christian south.

But gay rights activists in Nigeria and abroad, the United Nations and Western countries, including the United States, attacked the law as a breach of human rights.

Is Polygamous Marriage Up Next For Marriage Equality?

Has Same-Sex Marriage Equality Open the door to Polygamous Marriage Equality?

Article Source Blaze.com

Immediately following the Supreme Court’s ruling this week, conservative radio host Glenn Beck warned that legalized polygamy wouldn’t be far behind. “If you change one variable — man and a woman to man and man, and woman and woman,” he said, “you cannot then tell me that you cannot logically tell me you can’t change the other variable: one man, three women. One woman, four men.”

Many gay marriage supporters scoff at the notion, declaring that no such thing could ever happen. But if that’s the case, no one apparently told the polygamists.

According to the Daily Mail, they’re pretty darned excited about the ruling:

‘I was very glad,’ polygamist Anne Wilde told Buzzfeed in the aftermath of the rulings. ‘The nuclear family, with a dad and a mom and two or three kids, is not the majority anymore.’

She added that many people in polygamous relationships were not in fact seeking the right to marry, but wanted to ensure that they were safe from prosecution.

Joe Darger, a man from Utah who has three wives, said the court ‘has taken a step in correcting some inequality, and that’s certainly something that’s going to trickle down and impact us’.

Anita Wagner Illig, a leading polygamy activist as head of the group Practical Polyamory, told U.S. News & World Report that gay-rights campaigners had set a welcome precedent.

‘We polyamorists are grateful to our brothers and sisters for blazing the marriage equality trail,’ she said.

‘I would absolutely want to seek multi-partner marriage – it would eliminate a common challenge polyamorists face when two [people] are legally married and others in their group relationships aren’t part of that marriage.’

Washington Christian Florist Being Sued By State After Refusing Flowers for Gay Wedding

Source: By The Blaze

Barronelle Stutzman Florist Owner Stands by her Christian belief. 

Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson has filed a consumer protection lawsuit against a business that refused to provide services for a same-sex wedding. Arlene’s Flowers & Gifts, located in Richland, is the focus of the legal drama, after its owner cited Christian views and apologized for an apparent inability to offer up flowers for the nuptials.

SeattlePI.com reports that the choice to file a lawsuit came after Ferguson attempted to get owner Barronelle Stutzman to reconsider the refusal to provide wedding flowers to a customer named Robert Ingersoll. The incident began on March 1, when the client first learned of Stutzman’s views.

After a March 28 letter from the attorney general failed to sway the business owner, legal action has been taken. The outlet explains:

An employee at Arlene’s Flowers and Gifts said late Tuesday that Stutzman was not present, adding:  “None of us will have any comment.”  Last month, Stutzman told KEPR-TV in the Tri-Cities:

“He (Ingersoll) said he decided to get married and before he got through I grabbed his hand and said, ‘I am sorry.  I can’t do your wedding because of my relationship with Jesus Christ.’  We hugged each other and he left, and I assumed it was the end of the story.”

Ingersoll and his partner, Curt Freed, were decade-long customers of Arlene’s Flowers & Gifts.  They went online with the refusal and the story went viral.  Stutzman refused to change her position, saying:  “It’s a personal conviction.  It’s not a matter of being right or wrong.  It’s my belief.”

 Ferguson’s office is seeking an injunction that would permanently require Arlene’s Flowers & Gifts to provide services to gays and lesbians. Should the company continue to avoid compliance, a $2,000 fine would be imposed for each failure to abide by the law.

“As attorney general, it is my job to enforce the laws of the state of Washington,” Ferguson said in a statement. “Under the Consumer Protection Act, it is unlawful to discriminate against customers on the basis of sexual orientation. If a business provides a product or service to opposite-sex couples for their weddings, then it must provide same-sex couples the same product or service.”

Stutzman seems ready to fight, though, with her lawyer responding to the challenge and claiming that non-profit legal groups are ready to represent the florist’s interests in court.

As the AP notes, the state’s anti-discrimination laws were expanded in 2006 to include sexual orientation, which is why the incident is being handled in this manner.