Free Republic

A Republican seeking congressional office and touting a reform agenda has just made history by becoming the first politician on the campaign trail to bring his gay partner to the forefront, with an advertising film. “I don’t see it as such a big deal,” said openly gay Carl DeMaio, of his campaign ad for California office that shows him holding hands with his gay partner, in The Daily Mail. He downplayed the ad further, saying that it’s not really different from other politician hopefuls who show their “spouse, their children, their household pets” in their ads, the newspaper said. In...

The music giants joined forces to promote marriage equality as both gay and straight couples were married at the same time. Macklemore & Ryan Lewis' "Same Love" anthem became the theme song for 33 newlyweds during the 56th Grammy Awards on Sunday night. The gay and straight weddings were officiated by Queen Latifah while the hit song about equality was performed by the rap duo with Madonna hitting the stage with them, along with Mary Lambert and jazz artist Trombone Shorty. PHOTOS: Grammys 2014: Red Carpet Arrivals "This song is not a love song for some of us but for...

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Almost overnight, Virginia has emerged as a critical state in the nationwide fight to grant gay men and women the right to wed. Related Stories Okla. gay marriage ban struck down; ruling on hold Associated Press Judge rules Oklahoma gay marriage ban unconstitutional AFP US judge strikes down Oklahoma gay marriage ban as ‘arbitrary, irrational' Christian Science Monitor Utah appeals gay marriage ruling to top US court AFP The Supreme Court Puts Utah's Gay Marriages on Pause The Atlantic Wire This purple state was once perceived as unfriendly and even bordering on hostile to gay rights....

The U.S. government has awarded permanent residency to the gay Mexican husband of a Coral Gables man, nearly two years after they wed in Washington, D.C, and seven months after the U.S. Supreme Court abolished a portion of the federal Defense of Marriage Act. “I’m very excited and very relieved,” said Daniel Zavala, 28, who applied for a green card shortly after he and Yohandel Ruiz, a Cuban-born American citizen, married May 1, 2012. “We feel like we finished the process and got what we’re looking for. We’re going on with our lives as a regular couple.” The couple had...

Oklahoma's gay marriage ban violates the U.S. Constitution, a federal judge ruled on Tuesday. U.S. District Judge Terrence Kern handed down the ruling in a lawsuit filed by two same-sex couples. Kern immediately stayed his ruling pending appeals, meaning gay marriages won't happen in Oklahoma right away. The gay couples had sued for the right to marry and to have a marriage from another jurisdiction recognized in Oklahoma. The Oklahoma ruling comes about a month after a federal judge in Utah overturned that state's ban on same-sex marriage. Hundreds of couples got married there before the U.S. Supreme Court intervened,...

Although Mayor Annise Parker has vowed that she and her longtime partner, Kathy Hubbard, will not wed until gay marriage is legal in Texas, in recent interviews the mayor has softened her stance. "The world is changing so fast, maybe I won't wait that long," Parker said last week in a year-end interview with CultureMap when asked when she would marry. "I'm no longer worried that (gay marriage in Texas) is not going to happen in my lifetime. After the Supreme Court ruling and the number of states that now have equal marriage, it's coming." Since then CultureMap has learned...

WEST POINT, N.Y. Two West Point graduates were married Saturday in the military academy's first wedding between two men. Larry Choate III, class of 2009, married Daniel Lennox, class of 2007, before about 20 guests. Choate, 27, taught Sunday school at the U.S. Military Academy's Cadet Chapel and said he always thought of it as the place he would get married if he could. West Point hosted two same-sex weddings of women in late 2012, more than a year after New York legalized same-sex marriage. But Saturday's wedding was the first time two men wed at West Point.

Hawaii’s battle over gay marriage brought state lawmakers back to work Monday after the governor called a special session that could make the islands a wedding destination for more couples. Some 1,800 people signed up to testify in person at a Senate committee hearing, which was carried live on TV and local news websites. Dozens of people gathered around three televisions in the Capitol rotunda, cheering testimony they agreed with and singing songs. Opponents of gay marriage solicited honks and shaka signs from passing motorists on the street, staging a large rally of hundreds of people timed with afternoon rush...

The government is issuing the regulations needed to allow gay couples married in states that recognize same-sex marriages to file joint federal tax returns. Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew says the new rules will provide "clear, coherent tax filing guidance for all legally married same-sex couples nationwide." Lew said the regulations also make clear that legally married same-sex couples will be able to move freely throughout the country and their federal tax filing status will not change.

A coalition of businesses and activist groups who launched a push Wednesday to defeat an amendment that would write Indiana’s same-sex marriage ban into the state constitution warned that if it passes it would set the state back and undermine the rights of its gay and lesbian residents. The push by the new Freedom Indiana coalition heralds an expected battle in Indiana’s next legislative session, not just between same-sex marriage opponents and gay rights advocates, but also big corporations who contend such a ban would be bad for business. More than 200 people, some holding blue signs reading “Liberty for...

Same-sex marriages that were outlawed in California 4½ years ago resumed in a rush after a federal appeals court took the “unusual, but not unprecedented” step of freeing couples to obtain marriage licenses, before the U.S. Supreme Court had issued its final judgment in a challenge of the state’s voter-approved gay marriage ban. … Although the couples fought for the right to wed for years, their nuptials came together in a flurry when a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a brief order Friday afternoon dissolving a stay it had imposed on gay marriages while...

Iowa at Disney encouraging gays to move to Hawkeye State October 2nd, 2009 by Eric Carpenter Figuring that plenty of gay couples in California are frustrated by the inability to get legally married here, representatives from Iowa have set up a booth at Gay Days at the Disneyland Resort encouraging them to consider moving to the Hawkeye State. Iowa is one of four states nationwide that allow gay marriages. That state’s Supreme Court made the decision earlier this year. Two representatives for three regional visitors bureaus flew out for the three-day Gay Days, when 30,000 partipants roll into town to...

Yesterday - less than three months after Kenneth W. Starr and I appeared in the California Supreme Court on behalf of our ProtectMarriage.com Campaign to defend Prop 8 - the Court finally issued its decision... all 185 pages of it! By a 6 to 1 vote, a nearly-unanimous majority of the Supreme Court upheld the vote of the people by which Prop 8 was passed into law to protect traditional marriage in our State Constitution. You can read the decision here as it appears on the Court's website. While there were no real surprises in the decision, and it looks...

Another marriage measure cleared for Calif. Associated Press March 20, 2009. SACRAMENTO -- The sponsors of a second ballot measure seeking to repeal California's ban on same-sex marriage have been cleared to start collecting signatures. The secretary of state on Friday gave the group Yes on Equality until August 17 to collect the nearly 700,000 signatures needed to qualify its initiative for the 2010 ballot. If approved by voters, the group's proposed constitutional amendment would rescind Proposition 8, which passed last November. The California Supreme Court is

Proposition 8 opponents received permission Tuesday from the California Secretary of State's office to begin collecting petition signatures toward a repeal of the state's same-sex marriage ban. Wed, Mar. 11, 2009 Posted: 08:19 AM EDT Proposition 8 opponents received permission Tuesday from the California Secretary of State's office to begin collecting petition signatures toward a repeal of the state's same-sex marriage ban. The initiative would side step the issue of same-sex marriage by making all couples eligible for marriage benefits regardless of their sexual orientation. If approved, the initiative would strike the word "marriage" from all state laws and replace...

SACRAMENTO, March 11, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - California same-sex "marriage" supporters are collecting signatures to support a ballot initiative that would remove civil marriage from California law entirely, as well as the provision codifying marriage as between a man and a woman. The "Domestic Partnership Initiative" proposes to categorize all unions simply as "domestic partnerships," while retaining all the rights of marriage for heterosexual couples, and extending them to homosexual couples. According to the initiative's summary, "Legally speaking, 'Marriage' itself would become a social ceremony, recognized by only non-governmental institutions." State Attorney General Jerry Brown submitted the official title and summary...

Strange times we live in when it takes a ballot initiative to confirm the definition of marriage as the union of a man and a woman. Stranger still when endorsing that definition through the democratic process brings threats and reprisals. In November, the San Francisco Chronicle published the names and home addresses of everyone who donated money in support of California's Proposition 8 marriage initiative. All available information, plus the amount donated, was broadcast. My name is on that list. Emails started coming. Heavy with epithets and ad hominems, most in the you-disgust-me vein. Several accused me, personally, of denying...

Calif. high court to hear challenge. There is little common ground between those on either side of the charged debate over marriage in California. But on the eve of the state Supreme Court hearing in San Francisco on Proposition 8, which prohibits same-sex marriage, advocates on both sides describe the issue in similar high-stakes rhetoric. “History swings on very small hinges sometimes,” said Jim Garlow, pastor at Skyline Church in La Mesa and one of the state's highest-profile supporters of Proposition 8. “On a broader scale, beyond the scope of the definition of marriage, this is about whether the social...

December 23, 2008, 4:00 a.m. Gross Dereliction of DutyBy the Editors As attorney general of California, Jerry Brown has a duty to defend the state and its laws in court. That duty requires him to offer the best grounds in defense of any law that may reasonably be defended. In a brief he filed last Friday in the case challenging Proposition 8 — the ballot measure that amended California’s constitution to ban same-sex marriage — Brown grossly violated that duty. On Election Day, California voters approved Proposition 8. Opponents of Proposition 8 then rushed to court to invalidate it...

The cause of gay rights has made enormous progress in the last couple of decades, but the more specific cause of gay marriage continues to be battered. In the same election that voters helped bridge the United States' racial divide by electing the country's first African-American president, voters in California overrode a ruling of that state's Supreme Court and effectively rebanned gay marriage. Reliably Democratic-voting California — home to those much-mocked "San Francisco values" that tolerate gay lifestyles — has now joined 29 other states, including Ohio, banning gay marriage. Protests in reaction to the vote popped up across the...