JAKARTA, Indonesia — In a sign of just how far the struggle for equality has come, an Indonesian constitutional court justice was forced to backtrack and apologize after stating his opposition to same-sex marriage during a fit and proper test before the House Commission III, the country’s legal affairs division. The justice, Arief Hidayat, was asked…
WELLINGTON, New Zealand — The New Zealand Parliament has approved a bill to legalize same-sex marriage , bringing the bill one vote closer to becoming law. The Jurist.org reported that the bill was approved by a vote of 77-44, in the second of three votes needed to become law. The second vote is generally the most critical, with the…
President Barack Obama has said he could not imagine a circumstance in which a state banning gay marriage was legal, the furthest statement in support of same-sex couples’ marriage rights made by the president. In an interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos, President Barack Obama said a state would need a “good justification” for treating…
BY ALEX ZADEL Alex Zadel is an intern at Political Research Associates. The two most prominent LGBTQ organizations in the conservative movement, GOProud and the Log Cabin Republicans, are getting the cold shoulder from the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). Since 1973, CPAC, hosted annually by the American Conservative Union Foundation (ACUF), has attracted thousands…
(CNN) — Former President Bill Clinton, who signed the Defense of Marriage Act into law in 1996, is now calling on the Supreme Court to rule the same law unconstitutional. The law, which defines marriage as a legal union between a man and a woman, denies federal benefits to same-sex couples in the nine states…
I spent last weekend in Washington, D.C. lobbying and learning with the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), America’s largest LGBT civil rights organization. I returned with a few stories to share. The last time I visited room 2410 in the Rayburn House office building with an HRC folder I got a forced smile from a staffer…
A North Carolina middle-school girl who wrote to all nine Supreme Court Justices for a ruling in favor of marriage equality on behalf of her same-sex parents has received a response. According to a report in the Washington Blade, Cameron a 6th grader received the response from Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor in a letter dated…
Freedom to Marry has released a new analysis of national polling data and trends on the freedom to marry by Joel Benenson, a leading Democratic pollster, and Dr. Jan van Lohuizen, a top Republican pollster. The acclaimed pollsters analyzed exit polls from the 2012 election and recent surveys to compile a document demonstrating that the well-documented…
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — Gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender investors are largely optimistic about their financial futures, but many don’t realize just how much extra money same-sex couples pay because the federal government doesn’t recognize gay marriage. Two-thirds, or 66%, of LGBT investors are optimistic about their financial futures, compared to just half of the…
WASHINGTON (CNN) — President Barack Obama said Friday that he would strike down a ban on same-sex marriage if he were on the Supreme Court, and that he believed his administration was obligated to weigh in on a California case before the justices. Speaking to reporters at the White House, Obama opened up about his…
