WASHINGTON, D.C., – Peace Corps Deputy Director Carrie Hessler-Radelet today announced that the agency will begin accepting applications from same-sex domestic partners who want to serve together as volunteers overseas. Same-sex couples may begin the application process starting Monday, June 3. “Service in the Peace Corps is a life-defining leadership experience for Americans who want to…
(CNN) — France’s top court ruled Friday that a bill permitting same-sex marriage and allowing gay couples to adopt children adheres to the constitution. President Francois Hollande is expected to sign the bill into law on Saturday. After the lower house of Parliament, dominated by Hollande’s governing Socialist Party, passed the bill last month, conservative…
In a sign of just how difficult the nascent gay rights movement is in the relatively new, relatively democratic country of Georgia, protesters, led by leaders of the Orthodox Christian Church derailed a gay pride parade shortly after it was scheduled to get under way. Thousands of anti-gay protestors, some with signs reading “We don’t…
(CNN) — Franklin Graham, one of the country’s most prominent evangelicals, says the targeting of conservative groups by the Internal Revenue Service included two of his ministries. “I am bringing this to your attention because I believe that someone in the administration was targeting and attempting to intimidate us,” Graham wrote in a letter Tuesday…
Each year since 2004, May 17 has marked the International Day against Homophobia and Transphobia (“IDAHO”) around the world. In more than 100 countries on all continents, activists and their allies are mobilizing. The mobilization for the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia this year confirms that May 17 has become an annual landmark for the defense…
(CNN) — The Brazilian National Council of Justice, which oversees the nation’s judiciary, passed a resolution Tuesday that denies notaries the right to refuse to perform same-sex marriages. In Brazil, notaries officiate marriages and civil unions. Recently, 12 Brazilian states began allowing same-sex couples to marry or convert their civil unions into marriages. However, since…
There are leaders within the LGBT community that are extremely frustrated that President Obama has not issued an executive order eliminating discrimination in employment for our community. Those leaders are extremely shortsighted and do not fully understand the strategy of the Obama administration. First, an executive order can be overturned immediately by the next president…
The state of Minnesota made it a round dozen for marriage equality when it became the twelfth state to pass a marriage equality bill. Minnesota also became the first Midwestern state to do so legislatively as Iowa became a marriage equality state due to a decision by the state Supreme Court. Gov. Mark Dayton has…
(CNN) — A transsexual woman has won on appeal the right to marry her boyfriend, a decision poised to rewrite Hong Kong’s marriage law. The appellant — known only by the initial “W” — is a post-operative male-to-female transsexual who was refused the right to marry because she did not quality as a “woman” under…
In what some see as a quasi-victory, New York Jets linebacker and self-described devout Christian Christian DeMario Davis went public Thursday in his support of gay athletes. In an interview with the Daily News, Davis appeared supportive of the idea of playing with other members of his team who were gay. “If someone was to come out on…
