Osaka first city in Japan to recognize same-sex couple foster parents News
Osaka first city in Japan to recognize same-sex couple foster parents

The City of Osaka, Japan on Wednesday became the first city [official website] in the country to recognize same-sex couples as foster parents. The city government officially certified two men as foster parents of a teenage boy who has been under their care since February [Japan Times report]. The couple first consulted the Osaka City child consultation center in the fall of 2015 about adopting the said teenager [Japan Today report]. Following that, they attended lectures, training, and reviews, as well as screenings by the city’s social welfare panel and was certified to take charge of a child under 18 on December 22, 2016. The Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry commented that there was no precedent of this event before. Japan has no legal provision excluding same-sex couples from being foster parents.

Same-sex marriage continues to be a hotly debated issue, both in the US and abroad. Last December, a legislative committee in the Taiwan Parliament approved a bill that would amend the Taiwan Civil Code to allow same-sex marriage [JURIST report]. The Judiciary and Organic Laws and Statutes Committee approved a change in the Code from “male and female parties” into “two parties,” which would allow homosexual couples to be legally wed. In September tens of thousands of people marched [JURIST report] in Mexico in protest of same-sex marriage, a controversial topic in the country further exacerbated by a proposal from embattled President Enrique Peña Nieto to recognize same-sex marriage. Last March 2015, a Tokyo district assembly became the first municipality in Japan to recognize same-sex partnerships [JURIST report].

THIS DAY @ LAW

Thomas Becket, former Chancellor of England, murdered by Henry II's knights

On December 29, 1170, Archbishop Thomas Becket, former Chancellor of England, was murdered in Canterbury Cathedral by knights acting in the name of Henry II.

Becket and Henry had been entangled in a power struggle over, among other things, criminal jurisdiction over clergy. Read a contemporary account of the murder of Thomas Becket.

Texas attains US statehood

On December 29, 1845, Texas became the twenty-eighth state to join the United States of America when US President James K. Polk signed the Ordinance of Annexation. Texas had a complicated path to statehood because it had formerly been part of Mexico and then an independent republic. The US Congress passed the Annexation of the Republic of Texas Joint Resolution on March 1, 1845. Voters in Texas then approved the Ordinance of Annexation in October, before it was approved by the US Congress and signed into law by President Polk on this day in 1845. The US Supreme Court later ruled in Texas v. White that, despite its unique path to statehood, Texas did not have the right to secede from the union.