LGBTQ news and entertainment
Adweek reports on this straight-to-the-heart ad from Esurance, who utilize the perspective of children to simplify the complexity of same-sex marriage. In other words, it’s not that complicated. And the children know it.
From the Esurance press release:
“In every state where Esurance can give couples a married rate, it extends that married rate to either married gay couples, domestic partners or those in civil unions—even in states that do not allow same-sex marriages.”
Very sweet ad.
SCOTUSblog, my expert source for all things U.S. Supreme Court theorizes that the Obamacare ruling could happen Friday, and same-sex marriage decision could come down on Monday.
June 26th is the 12th anniversary of Lawrence v. Texas (overturning all sodomy laws), and the 2nd anniversary of Windsor v. US (requiring federal recognition of same-sex marriages).
Coincidence?
Odds are that SCOTUS will decide Obamacare this Friday and same-sex marriage next Monday.
— SCOTUSblog (@SCOTUSblog) June 22, 2015
The court has added this coming Thursday to the calendar for releasing decisions.
Possibly the two biggest rulings of this term, same-sex marriage and Obamacare, have yet to be released.
This could well go to Monday, June 29th. SCOTUS loves to draw out the drama on big rulings.
10AM as usual.
SCOTUS will next issue opinions at 10a ET Thursday.
— SCOTUSblog (@SCOTUSblog) June 22, 2015
From the American Foundation for Equal Rights:
We’re down to the last few days before the Supreme Court rules on marriage.
In the mean time, the National Organization for Marriage is asking all of the GOP presidential candidates to sign an anti-equality pledge.
Let’s take a look at just how crazy this pledge gets.
As the time draws near that the U.S. Supreme Court will hand down it’s ruling on same-sex marriage (very possibly this week), Frank Bruni of the New York Times addresses some opponents concerns that this evolution on marriage has come “too quickly” and “in an instant.”
Nothing about this juncture feels quick if you soldiered through AIDS and the country’s awakening then to just how many gay, lesbian and bisexual Americans there are, just how profound our bonds can be, just how fiercely we’re willing to fight for them, just how ardently we ache to be included.
Nothing about it feels quick if you consider that Evan Wolfson, a chief architect of the political quest for same-sex marriage, wrote a thesis on the topic at Harvard Law School in 1983, or if you remember how passionately the issue of same-sex marriage was debated in the 1990s, when the Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA, was passed.
Nothing about it feels quick if you’re among or you know gay and lesbian Americans who, in a swelling tide, summoned the grit and honed the words to tell family members, friends and co-workers the truth of our lives. Our candor came from more than personal need. It reflected our yearning for a world beyond silence and fear, and we knew that the only way to get there was through these small, aggregate acts of courage.
Same-sex marriage isn’t some overnight cause, some progressive novelty, especially not when it’s put in its proper context, as part of a struggle for gay rights that has been plenty long, patient and painful.
[snip]
Ask Edie Windsor. Her protest of the estate taxes that she was ordered to pay — but that a widow with a dead husband instead of a dead wife would have been spared — prompted the Supreme Court to gut DOMA two years ago.
She was married in Canada in 2007. When her wife first proposed to her, she gave Windsor a brooch instead of a ring, so that the diamond didn’t prompt questions from co-workers.
That was in 1967: nearly half a century ago. So don’t tell her that the idea of same-sex marriage needs more time to ripen.
The full op-ed can be found here.
Forward.
Colin Farrell shares with Jimmy Fallon the spirit of the day when same-sex marriage was recently passed via public referendum by over 60% in Ireland (“It was just rainbows everywhere!”).
The Pitcairn Islands, the world’s least populous country, has passed a new law that legalizes gay marriage for the nation’s 56 inhabitants.
A British colony in the located in southern Pacific Ocean.
Click here for the text of the new law.
Just days before Vienna Pride, the National Assembly of Austria has voted down a resolution to give gay and lesbian couples ‘the human right of marriage.’
The resolution garnered only 26 votes in support, while 110 members voted against.
From Gay Star News:
On Tuesday, in light of the opening of Vienna’s Pride Village, the Social Democratic Party of Austria (SPÖ), coalition partner to the conservative Austrian People’s Party, demanded equality for all – now their representatives voted against marriage equality.
‘The SPÖ’s deepest conviction are equal marriage rights for homosexual people,’ said party whip Andreas Schieder during a discussion about the resolution.
‘We demand full equality. Right now, such a resolution – even supported by the SPÖ – wouldn’t get a majority.
‘Which is why we will continue to work on convincing conservative forces that these are life realities and discrimination cannot have a place.’
From the American Foundation for Equal Rights:
With the Supreme Court due to rule on marriage any day now, Presidential “candidate” Rick Santorum says he would fight back against a pro-equality ruling. He says that states allowing gay and lesbian couples to marry is a violation of his religious freedom, which is an argument a lot people made about interracial marriage in the 60s.
So do couples need to worry about the possibility that Rick Santorum could stop them from marrying? No. For one thing, the president doesn’t get to veto Supreme Court rulings.
And for another, Rick Santorum will never be president.
