After a few months of legislative hiatus, it looks like Governor Paterson is ready to bring New York’s legislators back together for a session in which, he says, gay marriage will be addressed. We can not wait! More from The Advocate:
“I am anticipating a special session and I am anticipating this is one of the issues that we will address,” Paterson told The Advocate Thursday night, shortly after leaving a meeting that included representatives from the Empire State Pride Agenda, the Human Rights Campaign, and Gill Action Fund. State senator Thomas Duane joined the discussion by phone.
A special session is almost a foregone conclusion at this point, according to people familiar with the situation in Albany. But assembly speaker Sheldon Silver said this week that he would like to pound out the details of a budget deal before agreeing to hold one.
“They want to have a framework before we come back,” said Paterson. “But I do think because of the deficit we’re going to have to come back and hopefully we’ll have an agreement.”
Looks like the next session of the New Jersey legislature, set to meet on November 3rd, will begin debate on a marriage equality bill, a great step that will, we believe, add New Jersey to the list of states that recognize all marriages. The story at Queerty:
When a door closes, a window opens. Or that’s the hope when it comes to same-sex marriage. Despite a judge throwing out the federal DOMA challenge Smelt v. United States, there is some good news on the marriage front. And it comes from, of all places, New Jersey.
It’s there that a lame duck legislative session beginning Nov. 3 will be used to debate a long overdue marriage equality bill. Back in 2006, you’ll recall, legislators passed civil unions after the State Supreme Court declared gay couples deserve the same rights. But there was no M-word.
While Mr. Olson came to the case by a serendipitous route that began late last year with Rob Reiner, a Hollywood director widely known for his Democratic activism, he said his support of same-sex marriage stemmed from longstanding personal and legal conviction. He sees nothing inconsistent with that stance and his devotion to conservative legal causes: The same antipathy toward government discrimination, he said, inspired him to take up another cause that many on the right applauded — a lengthy campaign to dismantle affirmative action programs.
A hearing in the marriage case, filed on behalf of two gay couples, is scheduled for Wednesday in federal court in San Francisco. Practicing his opening argument recently, Mr. Olson declared that California’s ban is “utterly without justification” and stigmatizes gay men and lesbians as “second-class and unworthy.”
“This case,” he said afterward, “could involve the rights and happiness and equal treatment of millions of people.”
The city council of Durham, NC, the home of Duke University, has put together a resolution that is very favorable to marriage equality. More from WUNC:
The city of Durham joins Chapel Hill and Carrboro in its support of civil marriage rights for same-sex couples. The Durham city council voted unanimously Monday night in favor of a resolution supporting same sex marriage.
State law prohibits same sex marriage, but Weaver says his resolution is aimed at changing minds one city at a time. Statewide polls show a majority of North Carolina voters oppose same sex marriage.
From the Daily Beast, with information from a report by Human Rights Watch, a tragic story about the rising tide of violence against gay men throughout Iraq. It’s enough to make your stomach turn.
Bodies have appeared by the dozens in hospitals and morgues. How many have been killed will likely never be known; the failure of authorities to investigate compounds the fear and shame of families to ensure that reliable figures are unattainable.
Many Iraqi men targeted in the killing campaign are being forced to flee the country and end up in surrounding countries where homosexuality is also criminalized. The report recommends that urgent action be taken to aid the safe resettlement in third countries of men who have managed to escape. For those who remain, fear and loathing seem to be a continuing fact of life.
Jonathan Rauch, a personal favorite, has a moving piece in the National Journal on the “Moral Crossroads” that Republicans face as gay marriage goes mainstream. When public opinion reaches critical mass in favor of civil marriage equality, as it most assuredly will, and bigotry towards homosexuals becomes as socially unacceptable as racism, what will Maggie Gallagher have to say for herself?
Peter Sprigg and Maggie Gallagher are cut from different cloths in some respects–Sprigg condemns homosexuality, whereas Gallagher accepts it–but they have in common what they offer to couples like Mike and Bill: silence. The same is true of nearly all other prominent opponents of same-sex marriage. (David Blankenhorn of the Institute for American Values is an honorable exception.)
If gay couples can’t be allowed to marry, what should they be able to do? Asked this question, cultural conservatives say, in the words of Tom Lehrer’s song about the German rocket scientist Wernher von Braun, “That’s not my department.” Effectively, conservatives are saying that what Mike and Bill do for each other has no significance outside their own bedroom.
It used to be that newspapers were the bastions of progressive and civil righteousness in our society. They spoke the truth and provided the weakest of groups the same platform as the dominant forces.
That time has now passed, if the example set by The Spectrum of St. George is to be believed.
The paper initially accepted the wedding announcement of Tyler Barrick and Spencer Jones, two men married in California and who were preparing for a wedding party back home in Utah.
“After all, our marriage is just as real and legal and entitled to celebration as any of the others that are announced each week in the pages of The Spectrum,” Jones, 30, wrote in an e-mail to Welch.
“This simply is not true,” Welch replied in an Aug. 10 e-mail, a copy of which the couple provided to The Associated Press. “While that may be the case in some states it is not the case in the state of Utah. As our policy is to run marriage announcements recognized by Utah law, I have made the decision not to run the announcement.”
La Jolla hotel developer Doug Manchester put up $125,000 to collect signatures for Prop 8, California’s absurd anti-gay-marriage initiative intended to overturn Caifornia’s legal gay marriages just to ruin people’s lives, because why not, wingnuts is special. But now richie-rich Mr. Manchester, who previously claimed he was bankrolling the Prop 8 signature effort because of his deep love of being married to a lady, has cruelly dumped his wife of 43 years and is cold trying to ruin her lifestyle!
Looks like Rick Santorum is prepared to reinvigorate his raging homophobia in the hopes of getting into the White House. From Politico:
POLITICO has learned Santorum will visit first-in-the-nation Iowa this fall for a series of appearances before the sort of conservative activists who dominate the state GOP’s key presidential caucuses.
The Pennsylvanian, who lost his 2006 reelection bid, will visit Iowa on October 1, appearing on a Des Moines radio talk show and speaking to a luncheon and workshop of Iowa’s Right to Life group before heading east to Dubuque, where he’ll headline a fundraiser for the conservative America’s Future Fund PAC and then speak about the future of the GOP to a public audience in the Mississippi River city.
In today’s 
Jonathan Rauch, a personal favorite, has 
