The first same-sex marriages have taken place in New Zealand following the successful passage of equal marriage legislation. According to the BBC, 31 couples were marrying today and about 1,000 same-sex couples in Australia planned to travel to the neighboring country to marry. Among the first couples tying the knot were Auckland couple Tash Vitali…
WASHINGTON — Following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision striking down a portion of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), Social Security and Medicare benefits may soon be available to same-sex couples in the District of Columbia and the 13 states recognizing same-sex marriage. June 26, in United States v. Windsor, the Supreme Court ruled Section 3 of DOMA unconstitutional, finding…
There appears to be no shortage of theories on why elected officials oppose same-sex marriage. Case in point? Ana Maria Jiménez Ortiz, an elected congresswoman from the Mexican political party PAN in Puebla argued in public that only couples who can look in each other’s eyes during sex should be eligible for marriage. “A marriage…
Today, the Department of Defense (DOD) announced its plan to extend benefits to same-sex spouses of uniformed service members and Department of Defense civilian employees. The announcement stated: After a review of the department’s benefit policies following the Supreme Court’s ruling that Section Three of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) is unconstitutional, and in…
When D. Bruce Hanes began issuing same-sex marriage licenses from his office in Norristown, Pa., no one, not Democrats nor Republicans, questioned his sense of right or wrong. They did, however, question his legal authority. As the legally appointed register of wills for the third most populous county in the Keystone state, his decision to…
Spurred on by two landmark Supreme Court victories, LGBT activists are pressing hard to overturn state bans on same-sex marriage in Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Virginia. But, warns Howard Simon, the executive director of ACLU of Florida, don’t expect any substantive changes in the near future for the sunshine state. “I don’t want to build…
HARRISONBURG, Va. – Today Lambda Legal, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia are filing a federal class action lawsuit seeking the freedom to marry for all same-sex couples in Virginia as well as an end to Virginia’s refusal to recognize marriages same-sex couples have legally entered elsewhere….
Following on the heels of April’s historic announcement by Vietnam’s Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Justice’s Ha Hung Cuong has called for the end of marriage discrimination against same-sex couples. In a statement released Monday, the Justice issued a road map for the eventual legalization of same-sex marriage including the recognition of property between two…
SAN DIEGO — New research on the psychological benefits of same-sex marriage from the Rockway Institute for LGBT Psychology & Public Policy at Alliant International University has been selected for presentation at the American Psychological Association (APA) annual convention July 31-Aug. 4 at the Hawaii Convention Center in Honolulu. The findings will be presented during…
Everyone knows that the Supreme Court struck down Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). That means married same-sex couples now qualify for the 1,100+ federal benefits that were previously denied to them. We can’t go through them all, so here are my top 15 benefits for married same-sex couples: IRA and Roth…
