While still not making the move to full-fledged marriage equality, the Australian government plans to make more than 100 law changes that would give same-sex couples the same rights as straight couples.

Attorney General Robert McLelland said that legislation would be introduced next month that will address issues like taxation, pensions and welfare payments.

Pink News reports:

McClelland told reporters in Canberra:

“The changes will provide for equality of treatment in a wide range of areas including superannuation, taxation, social security, workers compensation and pharmaceutical benefits,”

“These will make a practical difference to the lives of a group of fellow Australians who, for far too long, have suffered discrimination at a Commonwealth level.”

The Victorian Gay and Lesbian Rights Lobby (VGLRL) today welcomed the Rudd Governments announcement that they will remove same-sex discrimination.

“We are thrilled to hear the Rudd Government has honoured their election promise to gay & lesbian Australians.” said Mr Stephen Jones, VGLRL Co-convenor.

“This reform is long overdue. Gay and lesbian Australians have been discriminated against for too long. We look forward to working with the government on the detail of the bill to remove the discrimination in the many complicated area’s of legislative reform.”

LGBT critics, however, say that the reforms are not enough.

“The Federal Government has got it wrong by asserting that discrimination is only about financial entitlements,” said Australia Marriage Equality official Peter Furness. “With around 100 Acts to be amended, this is an extraordinarily complex way to deliver financial equality when the government could simply amend a few words in the marriage act.”

Openly gay Pittsburgh City Councilman penned a column in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on Sunday condemning a proposed constitutional ban on marriage equality and calling it “homophobia, bigotry and sanctioned discrimination of a selected class of people.”

Kraus, who won election to the City Council last year with the support of the Victory Fund, adapted his piece from remarks he made at a state Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the topic.

Kraus writes:

Today, once again, by the actions of our Pennsylvania General Assembly, I am reminded that the last, socially acceptable targets of discrimination within our society are gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgendered people. With Senate Bill 1250, Pennsylvania state legislators, under the guise of morality and religiosity, seek to amend the constitution of the commonwealth of Pennsylvania to read: “No union other than a marriage between one man and one woman shall be valid or recognized as marriage or the functional equivalent of marriage by the commonwealth.”

With all the challenges that we, as a commonwealth, are facing — deteriorating infrastructure; staggering health-care costs; municipalities crippled by the inability or unwillingness of legislators to ensure that nonprofits contribute toward ever escalating municipal service costs; rampant gun violence; and corruption in government — certain Pennsylvania state legislators would like us to believe that defining marriage and outlawing civil union is our most pressing legislative priority.

In reality this is their mark of shame.

Legislating a ban on same-sex marriage or civil unions is homophobia, bigotry and sanctioned discrimination of a selected class of people. I would liken homophobia to racism, sexism and anti-Semitism because it seeks to dehumanize people and deny them their dignity, personhood and equal protection under the law. In the year 2008, would you dare to legislate to deny marriage or civil union based on race, creed, age or ethnicity?

Read the rest of Kraus’ column here.  Currently, the Victory Fund has endorsed Kevin Lee as a candidate for the Pennsylvania state legislature.

Victory endorsee Randi Shade’s bid for Austin City Council is heating up as her May 10 election day approaches.

Her most recent success comes in the form of an endorsement by the editorial board of the Austin American-Statesman. The paper claims that Shade’s business experience and impressive credentials qualify her to tackle Austin’s challenges. Furthermore, they claim incumbent Jennifer Kim has focused “too narrowly on policy and has been unable – or unwilling – to make the transformation to elected leader.”

The paper writes:

Shade, 41, is a proven leader. That quality is needed on a council being pulled in several directions at once. Shade is the kind of doer who can help the council focus on important issues during an economic slowdown. This council already wastes too much time on pet projects and other unworthy distractions.

Shade, a graduate of Harvard Business School, successfully ran the AmeriCorps volunteer program under Govs. Ann Richards and George W. Bush. She then founded a successful Internet company that sold gift cards for charitable donations. Throughout her campaign, Shade has demonstrated a thorough knowledge of the city and its challenges.

Shade also recently began running a television ad. To make a contribution to Randi’s campaign, click here.

A bill that would have added sexual orientation as a protected class under the Florida Civil Rights Act failed to appear on the state Senate’s Community Affairs Committee, according to Express Gay News.

The bill, which experienced a breakthrough earlier this month when Republican Sen. Jeff Atwater agreed to co-sponsor the bill with Democratic Sen. Ted Deutch. While Atwater’s support resulted in the bill being passed in the Senate’s Commerce Committee, it still failed to get a hearing after Senate President Ken Pruitt ordered legislator to stop working on bills whose companions are stalled in the House. Rep. Kelly Skidmore, whose bill includes gender identity and expression, has been unable to get a hearing in the House.

Gay rights organizations were split on Deutch’s bill because it did not include gender identity and expression.

Jessica Orsini, formerly Jeff Orsini, is an rarity in small town life. As an openly transgender individual, her fellow citizens elected her to serve on the Board of Aldermen of Centralia, Missouri.

“Initially I ran in 2004 … a right-wing candidate ran pretty much through the pulpits and beat me,” she said in an interview with Vox Magazine. “However, the mayor at the time decided to appoint me to the Planning and Zoning Commission afterward, and (during) the two years I spent on it, people got to know me. They got to realize that I wasn’t just some stereotype, that I was a person, that I had good ideas, that I was concerned about the community. I ran again in 2006, and I won.”

Orsini goes on to dispel the stereotype of small town closed-mindedness. Orsini, whose sexual identity led to her being discharged from the Air Force for “medical reasons,” claims that the idea that people in small towns won’t accept anything different is false.

“I think that in small towns, there’s a certain wariness toward things that aren’t necessarily understood or toward outsiders, but once somebody becomes known, they can be very accepting communities,” she said.

The article claims that Orsini is the country’s only transgender public official, but she is joined by Hawaii’s Kim Iwamoto who serves on the Oahu Board of Education.