GOOD NEWS WHEN YOU CAN GET IT.This week's Newsweek U.S. edition makes the dubious claim that Hillary "seems like the safest money in the 2008 race," and proceeds to analyze how she might govern the country. This piece is a long, tepid regurgitation of Clinton's career with little new insight, rife with quotes from anonymous staffers and advisers. Read it if you'd like, but don't say I didn’t warn you.
But swing over to this week's cover story in the international edition of the magazine (read: not the cover story here in the U.S.): "Legal in Unlikely Places," which takes a look at the state of gay rights around the world. (A quick run to the nearest purveyor of periodicals, reveals that the U.S. edition doesn't contain the story at all, actually.)
Seems that both social and legal acceptance of homosexuality is rapidly increasing in some unexpected parts of the world. South Africa legalized civil unions in November 2006, making them the first developing nation to do so, and former Catholic strongholds like Latin America are also warming to civil unions. They've been legalized in Mexico City and Buenos Aires, and in Colombia, a bill is working its way through the National Congress that would grant full rights to health insurance, inheritance and social-security benefits to gay and lesbian couples.
Money quote: "The Catholic Church was facing a credibility crisis," says longtime Mexico City-based gay-rights activist [Alejandro] Brito. "So many of its leaders including [Mexico's top cardinal Norberto] Rivera knew that if they fiercely opposed the gay-union law, the news media would eat them alive."
Unlike in the U.S., where ... this article doesn't even appear in Newsweek.
--Kate Sheppard
