A US state asking for EU membership, that would cause quite a stir.
I guess New England states would fit in alright, they would just need to generalize the metric system and allow women to be topless on beaches to comply with EU regulations.
Rhode Island could also try to join the Canadian federation, it's closer, and if you took Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine with you, you would even have territorial continuity.
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Poland's ban of gay parade ruled illegal
Poland has lost its case against a group of gay parade organisers, with the Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights ruling unanimously that Warsaw's ban on a 2005 rally - which took place anyway - was illegal.
In a verdict announced on Thursday (3 May), the court said Poland broke several principles covered by the European human rights conventions, such as freedom of assembly and prohibition of discrimination.
Back in 2005 - after the organisers filed their request for a permission to hold a tolerance march in May and a rally in June - the Mayor of Warsaw said in a newspaper interview that in his view, "propaganda about homosexuality is not tantamount to exercising one's freedom of assembly."
He then went on to refuse to give the green light to organisers. But the June parade went ahead anyway and was attended by around 3000 people.
The group of European judges, including one from Poland, suggested that without official authorisation for the 2005 event, people could have been discouraged from participating in it as "no official protection could be ensured by the authorities against potentially hostile demonstrators."
Warsaw also proved discriminatory against the gay march organisers, according to the Strasbourg court, as it explained its decision to refuse allowing the event by referring to the applicants' failure to submit a 'traffic organisation plan' – something it had not requested from organisers of other rallies.
The verdict comes just a week after MEPs adopted a resolution calling for a fact-finding parliamentary mission to be sent to Poland to look into the issue of homophobia and potential discrimination against gays and lesbians in the country.
Prior to last week's debate on the topic, the parliament's legal service confirmed it had not found any proof of Poland breaking the EU's rules on anti-discrimination in terms of legislation already in place.
But MEPs voiced their concerns over plans by the country's education minister, Roman Giertych, to introduce a new law stating that "promotion of sexuality" by school directors, teachers and pupils should be punished.
Also, the deputies criticised the suggestion by the Polish Ombudsman for Children to set up a list of jobs for which homosexuals are unfit.
But parliamentarians praised the fact that gay pride events are no longer systematically banned in Poland.
EU Observer