Idaho couple hope to make history in challenge to state’s same-sex marriage ban

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…

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HRC calls on VA to fully implement the spirit of Windsor decision

WASHINGTON – Human Rights Campaign (HRC) president Chad Griffin has written to  Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki urging him to apply a broad interpretation of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in United States v. Windsor, to ensure recognition of veterans’ same-sex spouses regardless of where they live.  After last year’s Windsor ruling invalidating Section 3 of…

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NOM’s Maggie Gallagher sounds defeatist note in latest blog post

National same-sex marriage opponent and the National Organization for Marriage’s (NOM) poster child Maggie Gallagher sounded a defeatist note in her latest blog entry entitled, “Cooper, Mozilla, Firefox,” reports Carolyn Lochhead, the Washington correspondent for the San Francisco Chronicle. She writes, “Maggie Gallagher, a founder and former president of the National Organization for Marriage, a…

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Israeli justice minister to promote inheritance law for same-sex partners

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…

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New Report shows Utah to gain financially with legalization of same-sex marriage

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…

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Bangladesh ‘surreptitiously’ holds its first Gay Pride rally

DHAKA — Using the Bangladesh’s New Year festivities, LGBT community members marched wearing the colors of the rainbow as an act of defiance and an appeal for the Muslim-majority country to change its law that considers same-sex relations as “unnatural” and a crime, reports GayAsiaNews.com. “Whether you are pro or anti LGBT, you cannot help…

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Gay Sherlock Holmes fan fiction irks China’s media regulator

CHINA — China’s media regulator has recently cracked down on fan fiction which focuses on romantic relationships between fictional characters of the same sex and that includes the popular Sherlock and Watson which it views as pornography, reports GayAsiaNews.com. The National Office Against Pornographic and Illegal Publications (NOAPIP) has recently launched a new crackdown on online pornographic content in…

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