WASHINGTON — After close consultation with the Department of Justice (DOJ), the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is providing guidance to same-sex married couples on the benefits and services to which they are entitled under current laws and regulations. “VA worked closely with DOJ to develop guidance to process cases involving same-sex marriages and to…
NEW YORK — The Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR) joined as plaintiff in a pending Federal District Court lawsuit challenging North Carolina’s same-sex marriage ban. Among the suit’s charges is that North Carolina’s ban on same-sex marriage restricts the rights of individuals to freely practice their religion and therefore violates the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment…
CHICAGO — Since the Supreme Court decision on the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) last year, 36% of the attorneys responding to a recent survey of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers (AAML) have noted an increase in same-sex couples seeking legal advice. In addition, 44% have confirmed that they have handled same-sex marriage or related…
Paul Smith, the third leg of a victorious legal stool that includes Theodore Olson and David Boise (Prop. 8), has argued that same-sex marriage will be a reality in the United States by 2015 at the earliest and 2016 at the latest. Smith, who successfully argued Windsor v. United States in 2013 – which struck…
One Toyota, an Oakland, California-based dealership quietly began running a new television ad in the San Francisco Bay area that features, for the first time in the United States, a same-sex couple exclusively for a car commercial. The spot shows a middle-class woman sitting in her driveway speaking to someone else about her new purchase,…
Since its now famous dual rulings on same-sex marriage –striking down both Prop. 8 and the Federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) – the United States Supreme Court has ushered in an era of challenges to same-sex marriage bans across the United States. No fewer than ten states have had their constitutional bans struck down…
Dan Haseltine, the lead singer for the hugely popular Christian rock band Jars of Clay, is under assault by Christians for his pro-gay Tweets, reports ChristianToday.com. In a series of short posts on Twitter last week, the Grammy Award-winning singer, having just watched 12 Years a Slave, noted that, “The treatment of people as less…
Israel’s Justice Minister Tzipi Livni is planning to promote an amendment to the Inheritance Law that would allow same-sex partners to be each others’ heirs when the Knesset reconvenes for its summer session May 11, reports GayAsiaNews.com. “Love is love, and a family is a family, and it’s inconceivable that the law allows for institutional…
A new report from the Williams Institute, a progressive think tank on the campus of UCLA, shows that Utah stands to gain significant financial advantage, increase tourism and create jobs if it were, in fact, to legalize same-sex marriage. The authors, E.G. Fitzgerald, Christy Mallory and M.V. Lee Badgett, have released a report entitled “Estimating…
“We’ve really put a lot of time into this,” Milton Aguilar said about his and Daniel Greer’s wedding, as they celebrated being the first same-sex couple to get married at the Spreckels Organ Pavilion in Balboa Park last Saturday. This milestone in marriage equality in the San Diego community was born from the memories Daniel…
