Fortuyn Killer Convicted
The man who killed Dutch gay politician Pim Fortuyn was convicted of murder and sent to prison for 18 years April 15.
Some of Fortuyn's supporters believed Volker van der Graaf, 33, should have been jailed for life. They stormed from the courtroom when the sentence was announced.
Van der Graff said he shot Fortuyn, who founded a very popular grass-roots political party, for the sake of The Netherlands' Muslim population. Fortuyn had proposed a ban on additional Muslim immigrants, saying the ones who were already there had failed to integrate into Dutch society.
Van der Graaf said, 'I could see no other option than to do what I did.'
Fortuyn, who may have had enough support to become prime minister, headed the new party Pim Fortuyn's List, which snagged 26 of Parliament's 150 seats nine days after the assassination, coming in second behind the Christian Democrats who won 43 seats. In addition to stemming immigration, the party stood for a crackdown on crime and increased attention to problems such as hospital waiting lists, train delays and education funding.
The List joined a three-way center-right governing coalition but infighting among List MPs prevented the three parties from working together and the cabinet disintegrated last October, becoming the shortest-lived Dutch government in 50 years.
BRIT TRANS LOSES MARRIAGE CASE
A British transsexual and her husband haven't been married for 22 years like they thought.
Five Law Lords from Britain's highest court, the House of Lords, ruled April 10 that Elizabeth and Michael Bellinger's marriage is invalid because gender is fixed at birth.
When the couple got married in 1981, the same year Elizabeth had a sex-change operation, no one requested proof of her gender. The Bellingers sought legal recognition as a test case.
'The man I have been married to all these years and been his wife, his dishwasher, cleaner and cook ... it means he has never existed,' Elizabeth, 56, said after the ruling. 'Everything was taken away from me today. ... I fear I am left with no choice other than to seek redress in the European courts.'
The British government said in December that it hopes to change laws that prohibit transsexuals from marrying as a member of their post-operative gender.
Only three other European nations—Albania, Andorra and Ireland—refuse to recognize sex changes.
CANADIAN CHILD CAN'T HAVE
THREE PARENTS
A two-year-old boy in London, Ontario, Canada, can't have two moms and a dad, Family Court Justice David Aston ruled April 11.
Although the three adults share parenting of the boy, only the biological mother and father are his parents, Aston ruled.
The judge said he wanted to rule otherwise, but the Children's Law Reform Act prevents him from naming more than two people as a child's parents.
The boy 'obviously [is] thriving in a loving family that meets his every need,' Aston said.
The nonbiological mother told the London Free Press, 'We are heartbroken that, in his honor's view, our lives cannot reflect the truth of our son's life.'
JAPAN OK'S GENDER-SWAP CANDIDATE
Japan's home affairs ministry ruled in mid-April that a transgender candidate could run for a local-government seat identified as her chosen gender.
News reports said the ministry's instructions to the Metropolitan Election Administration Commission may be the first time the government OK'd submission of a public document with a gender reference contrary to an individual's family register.
Aya Kamikawa, 35, will run for the Setagaya Ward Assembly as a woman even though she was born male. The election is April 27.
'I hope the decision will serve as a starting point for necessary legal reforms to allow one to live fully in accordance with one's preferred sex,' she told the Japan Times.
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