Blogs

Good news from our friends at Equality Texas, who we partnered with on the recent Lobby Day event at the Texas State Capitol. One of the bills designed to help defend LGBT youth in Texas, HB 1323, has cleared committee and could be debated on the Texas House floor as early as this week.   According to Equality Texas's fact sheet on the bill, it would:

• "add reporting standards for incidents of bullying in Texas public schools.   Specifically, school districts would be required to provide r

After the last few years of ballot measures in which marriage was declared the sole domain of heterosexuals by a number of states around the nation, it looks as if more states are looking to follow the recent lead of Iowa and Vermont to allow LGBT individuals to enter into legal same-sex marriages. In New York, Gov. David Paterson has announced that he's seeking to introduce a gay marriage bill in the state House today.

Today, we invited Paul Dodd to talk to us about his experience of visiting a non-affirming church in 2004.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8xF_OpKYaE] To learn more about Sundays of Solidarity and to sign-up, visit our SOS website.

Atticus Circle is proud to join Military Readiness Enhancement Act (MREA) Legislative Team (MLT) and SLDN in the fight to guarantee equality for all of our patriots and make our military more effective. 137 US Representatives are now cosponsors of MREA and that number continues to grow. That said, there is still much work to be done. We have a unique opportunity to get rid of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" once and for all.

More great news -- this time from our nation's capitol. The District of Columbia Council voted unanimously in favor of legislation recognizing same-sex marriages from other states as marriage in the District. "This is the march towards human rights and equality," said Council member David A. Catania, at-large independent. "It is not the march toward special rights...and that march is coming here." Council members voted 12-0 in favor of an amendment to a bill introduced by Phil Mendelson, at-large Democrat.

Vermont has become the fourth state in the Union to legalize gay marriage! This happened literally minutes ago, on the heels of Iowa's decision last week to extend marriage rights to LGBT individuals. It happened in somewhat dramatic fashion -- as promised, Vermont Gov. Jim Douglas vetoed the bill after it passed both the Vermont House and Senate, and though the Senate easily overrode the veto by achieving a 2/3 majority, there was speculation the Vermont House could not reach that same 2/3 threshold.

Amazing news out of the Heartland this morning: The Iowa Supreme Court has ruled that gay marriage is legal in Iowa, as a result of a legal challenge of Iowa's same-sex marriage ban.

The legislative action around gay marriage in Vermont -- and now in New Hampshire -- is getting more and more interesting by the day. In Vermont, it looks as if both the state's House and Senate will pass a bill affording LGBT individuals the right to marry, but Gov. Jim Douglas has said he may veto the bill if it crosses his desk without the 2/3 majority necessary to override a veto.

In case you didn't catch this last week, even Webster's is aware of the change afoot in how society is viewing marriage. The latest dictionary definition from Webster's includes same-sex marriage and gay marriage in the overall definition. Pam's House Blend, one of our favorite blogs, notes that the definition isn't sitting well with gay marriage opponents. It's certainly an interesting indicator of where society's moving.