AUSTRALIAN ADVOCATES WELCOME US GOVERNOR'S SUPPORT FOR MARRIAGE EQUALITY GOVERNOR OF WASHINGTON STATE SAYS DOMESTIC PARTNERSHIP "NOT EQUALITY"

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• For a video of her statement
• For a report on David Shearer's comments

A Navy tradition caught up with the repeal of the U.S. military's "don't ask, don't tell" rule on Wednesday when two women sailors became the first to share the coveted "first kiss" on the dock after one of them returned from 80 days at sea.

Petty Officer 2nd Class Marissa Gaeta of Placerville, Calif., descended from the USS Oak Hill amphibious landing ship and shared a quick kiss with her partner, Petty Officer 3rd Class Citlalic Snell of Los Angeles. The crowd screamed and waved flags around them.

Both women, ages 22 and 23 respectively, are fire controlmen in the Navy. They met at training school and have been dating for two years.

Navy officials said it was the first time on record that a same-sex couple was chosen to kiss first upon a ship's return. Sailors and their loved ones bought $1 raffle tickets for the opportunity. Gaeta said she bought $50 of tickets. The Navy said the money would be used to host a Christmas party for the children of sailors.

The ship returned to Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek-Fort Story following an 80-day deployment to Central America. The crew of more than 300 participated in exercises involving the militaries of Honduras, Guatemala Colombia and Panama as part of Amphibious-Southern Partnership Station 2012.

Snell is based on the USS Bainbridge, the guided missile destroyer that helped rescue cargo captain Richard Phillips from Somali pirates in 2009.

"It's something new, that's for sure," Gaeta told reporters after the kiss. It's nice to be able to be myself. It's been a long time coming."

Read the full story and see the video here.

The Coalition’s position on the issue comes as Loree Rudd, the sister of Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd, revealed today that she had handed in her Labor membership following the ALP’s recent decision to make marriage equality part of its policy platform.

Abbott’s position has angered some senior Coalition MPs who claim their leader ruled out a conscience vote during a national television interview on Sunday only days after suggesting otherwise to them in private messages, the Sydney Morning Herald reports.

High-profile Liberal MPs Malcolm Turnbull, George Brandis, Christopher Pyne were all said to be in shock after Abbott had earlier signalled to them that while the Coalition would not change its official policy on marriage equality that he would allow a free vote on the issue when a private member’s bill is introduced into Federal Parliament next year.

During yesterday’s Cabinet meeting, Joe Hockey, Bruce Billson, Greg Hunt and Nigel Scullion also gave their support for a conscience vote to be held. Abbott said that his continued opposition to a conscience vote rests with promises that every Coalition MP made before the last election to keep marriage between a man and a woman, The Age reports.

Full Story at: http://gaynewsnetwork.com.au

A popular “gay” penguin couple in China has been given a newly hatched chick to care for. The male penguins were given the hatchling because a female penguin was struggling after giving birth to twins, which is rare for penguins, according to the U.K.’s Metro.

“It’s a big job creating a baby penguin. It’s definitely a two-penguin job,” Kevin McGowan of the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology in Ithaca, N.Y., told ABCNews.com.

McGowan said that newborn penguins require a great deal of attention and effort to protect. In the rare event of a penguin giving birth to twins, one of the hatchlings can be in danger.

“In birds, it doesn’t matter what sex you are. Both sexes are perfectly capable and absolutely necessary to raise a penguin bird,” McGowan said. “It’s not like mammals where only one sex can feed.”

The penguins were born at Harbin Polar Land in northern China at the end of November. The “gay” penguin couple has been known to try to steal eggs during hatching seasons, according to Metro.

“The [heterosexual] pairs do a display of bringing a pebble, passing it back and forth. The interaction gets the birds going and synchronized for breeding season,” McGowan said. “If [the 'gay' penguins] are doing the same kind of thing, they could be passing the pebble and ready to roll.”

McGowan said that the hatchling will likely not suffer from being separated from its biological parents and could eventually recognize the “gay” penguins as its parents.

“It takes a little while to learn who your parents are,” McGowan said. “Little kids just don’t care who feeds them. All they want is to be fed.”

The Chinese penguins are the second pair of “gay” penguins to recently capture the public’s attention. Buddy and Pedro are two inseparable male birds at the Toronto Zoo, whose impending break-up sparked public outcry in November. They will be reunited in the spring.

The two will be split up approximately one week from now for breeding season. Zookeepers want them to breed with females to help populate the species, which is endangered. But when the breeding season is over, all the African penguins will eventually return to the same enclosure, and “if Buddy and Pedro want to be together … they will be back together,” said Tom Mason, Toronto Zoo curator of birds.

While McGowan said there is no guarantee that the new parents in China will take to the chick, it is a likely possibility that they will not be able to resist.

“A begging baby is a strong stimulus for anyone,” McGowan said.

Source: http://abcnews.go.com

The Obama administration bluntly warned the world against gay and lesbian discrimination, declaring the U.S. will use foreign assistance as well as diplomacy to back its insistence that gay rights are fully equal to other basic human rights.

In unusually strong language, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton compared the struggle for gay equality to difficult passages toward women's rights and racial equality, and she said a country's cultural or religious traditions are no excuse for discrimination.

"Gay rights are human rights, and human rights are gay rights," she said.

Clinton's audience included diplomats from Arab, African and other nations where homosexuality is criminalized or where brutality and discrimination against gay people is tolerated or encouraged.

She said nothing about consequences or penalties the U.S. might apply to nations it judges poor protectors of gay rights, but she spoke shortly after President Barack Obama directed the State Department and other agencies to make sure U.S. diplomacy and foreign assistance promote gay rights.

Clinton named no countries with specifically poor records on gay rights, although the U.S. has already pointed to abuses against gays by such friends as Saudi Arabia.

"It should never be a crime to be gay," Clinton declared.

The Obama administration already supports the broad principles of equality Clinton articulated, but making those principles an explicit challenge to other nations is new. The White House said Tuesday's announcement marked the first U.S. government strategy to combat human rights abuses against gays and lesbians abroad.The order also directs U.S. agencies to use foreign assistance to protect human rights and advance non-discrimination and to work with international organizations to fight discrimination against gays and lesbians.

Read full sory at: http://abcnews.go.com

Teen pleads guilty to murder charge in slaying of gay student.

A California teen pleaded guilty on Monday to second-degree murder for shooting to death a 15-year-old gay classmate at his middle school who he said made unwanted sexual advances.

The plea by Brandon McInerney, under an agreement with Ventura County prosecutors, brings to a close an emotionally charged case that previously resulted in a hung jury on a charge of murder with a hate crime enhancement.

McInerney, who was 14 at the time of the shooting in 2008, will be sentenced to 21 years in prison without time off for good behavior when he appears before a judge in December, prosecutors said.

Prosecutors said McInerney, now 17, took a gun to his middle school in Oxnard and sat in a computer lab with classmate Larry King before shooting him in the back of the head and then firing at him as he lay on the ground.

King died two days later after he was removed from life support at a local hospital.

Prosecutors initially charged McInerney as an adult and accused him of murder with hate crime and gun use enhancements, in a case that was moved to suburban Los Angeles over concerns he might not get a fair trial in Ventura County where the shooting occurred.

King, 15, was openly gay, and McInerney's attorneys argued he made sexual advances against their client.

Read more at: http://www.reuters.com