Weekly Political Roundup

• The U.S. House of Representatives passed the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2007 (LLEHCPA), aka the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Act. The Senate must now vote on the measure, although the White House has already threatened a veto. Pam’s House Blend has fuller coverage and a breakdown of the vote.
• The U.S. Supreme Court rejected without comment an appeal by Lisa Miller-Jenkins, a biological mother who has been trying to deny visitation rights to her former partner, Janet Miller-Jenkins. She was attempting to appeal a Vermont Supreme Court ruling that the state’s civil-union law, rather than Virginia law, governs the dispute. (Thanks, PageOneQ.)
• The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has granted asylum to a lesbian political dissident from Turkmenistan.
• The Colorado House followed the Senate in passing a bill to ban workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation. Governor Bill Ritter has said he will sign it. (Nice, but what about adding gender identity?)
• The ACLU profiled the case of Elizabeth Hadaway and the seven-year-old girl she was about to adopt, before the state of Georgia took the girl away on the grounds that Hadaway is a lesbian. This is a tragic case, with the girl now in foster care despite the presence of a woman who wants to be her mother and has shown no reason she shouldn’t be granted that right. News like this casts a pall over the otherwise good news this week.
• Lambda Legal, in a summary judgment hearing on behalf of six plaintiff couples, asked the Iowa Court to rule for the couples and their children in its lawsuit seeking full marriage equality.
• North Carolina-based Faith In America has launched a campaign to stop religious conservatives from pressuring candidates to oppose LGBT-rights. The campaign is targeting Iowa, South Carolina, New Hampshire and Nevada, all of which hold early presidential caucuses or primaries.
• The Minnesota Senate approved a bill giving domestic partners hospital visitation rights and the right to make health-care decisions for each other. The House must now vote on the measure.
• At the same time, members of the Minnesota House and Senate caved to the threat of Governor Tim Pawlenty’s veto, and eliminated part of a spending bill that would have allowed same- and opposite-sex domestic partners of state employees to receive health care benefits.
• When New York Governor Eliot Spitzer introduced legislation last week in favor of same-sex marriage, his administration also said that all legal out-of-state same-sex marriages of state and local government employees will be recognized. Road trip to Montreal!
• The Oregon Senate endorsed a measure giving same-sex couples the benefits of marriage through domestic partnerships. Governor Ted Kulongoski has said he will sign it. As I mentioned last week, Oregon DPs would have all of the rights and responsibilities of marriage, unlike DPs in other jurisdictions, who are limited (typically) to various medical and inheritance rights.
• The Vermont House voted to include gender identity among protected categories under the state’s anti-discrimination laws.

Around the world:

• Australia’s Labor Party approved a campaign plank calling for a national domestic partner registry for same-sex couples, giving them limited rights with respect to inheritance, property and pensions.
• The European Court of Human Rights ruled in favor of LGBT-rights advocates in Poland, saying that the government’s refusal to allow gay rights rallies in Warsaw two years ago violated their freedom of assembly.
• Switzerland will hold a referendum on May 20 on whether same-sex couples should be exempt from inheritance tax when one of them dies. A Swiss right-wing party fighting the proposal was just forced to change or remove advertising posters which call same-sex couples infertile. The party’s general secretary, according to Pinknews.co.uk, said that “gay people contribute nothing to society because they do not have children.” Don’t get me started.