Gay Marriage Ruling Expected Today


Today, the State Court of Appeals is expected to decide on whether to put the same-sex marriage question on the ballot in November.

Last week, the state elections board deadlocked on whether to certify all the signatures gathered.
So right now, the issue is off the ballot, but that could change depending on today's ruling.


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Home Depot to insure domestic same-sex partners
Jennifer Waters


CHICAGO (CBS.MW) -- Home Depot said Thursday that health insurance will be available to employees' same-sex domestic partners beginning next year. The country's largest do-it-yourself retailer said eligible employees can start signing up their domestic partners next month. The company said the benefits revision had been in the works for about a year. Home Depot has been criticized for insuring employees' pets but not their same-sex domestic partners. Shares of Home Depot (HD) were trading at $37.65, up 77 cents, or 2.1 percent.


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Antibullying policies in place for Vermont schools


New antiharassment and antibullying policies are in place to mark the start of the new school year in Vermont. The laws are meant to clarify what constitutes harassment in schools and how better to handle reported incidents and also to require school boards to update their discipline plan to include the new legislation on bullying. The harassment law introduces a new review process that allows the family lodging the complaint to seek a third party to discover what actions were followed in dealing with the situation.



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Recognizing gay marriages may be left to Legislature
By Lornet Turnbull
Seattle Times staff reporter


OLYMPIA — In defending Washington's ban on gay marriage before a judge here yesterday, the state appeared to concede that same-sex couples may be owed some kind of legal recognition.

Assistant Attorney General William Collins, arguing before Thurston County Superior Court Judge Richard Hicks, suggested that the court might uphold the ban, but the Legislature could consider allowing same-sex civil unions.

Collins told the court that the claims of 11 couples suing the state for the right to marry come down to two questions:

The first is whether Washington's constitution requires the state to extend to same-sex couples benefits and rights identical to those offered to heterosexual married people, Collins argued.


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Calif. Supreme Court to Clarify Gay Parents' Rights
Mike McKee
The Recorder


Gay rights lawyers celebrated on Wednesday after the California Supreme Court granted review in three cases that could have significant impact on the rights of thousands of same-sex parents statewide.

All three involve lesbian break-ups -- one in which the birth mother was granted sole parental rights, another in which a woman was granted rights as a "presumed father," and the third involving whether one parent could be forced to pay child support.

"I couldn't be happier," San Francisco attorney Jill Hersh, who represents a plaintiff in one of the cases, said about the court's action. "I hope in the long run it means children of same-sex couples are going to be treated with the same regard as those of opposite-sex couples."


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A Party for Some
By Joshuah Bearman, LA Weekly


The big tents have been well guarded at the Republican convention in New York. It took some doing to penetrate the several layers of security at the Log Cabin Republicans' Big Tent party Sunday to hear them complain about their own difficulty getting inside the symbolic big tent pitched over Madison Square Garden this week. "There are two Republican parties," Patrick Guerriero, Log Cabin's executive director, said to the crowd assembled at the Bryant Park Grill. "The party has to make a choice: Is it an inclusive Republican Party, or one hijacked by the radical right?"

He was highlighting the tension between a conservative base drifting so far into the outer reaches of ideological space that they're red-shifting from the Doppler effect, and the increasingly anomalous social moderates in the prime-time speaker lineup.

Everyone else on the itinerary at the Bryant Park Grill tried to celebrate the party's deep cleavage as "diversity," but the right-leaning imbalance was in evidence at the platform committee meetings held earlier in the cavernous and strangely vacant Javits Center, where the grip of the social conservatives tightened. They successfully dodged an attempt by the Log Cabin Republicans, along with fellow moderates from the Republicans for Choice, to soften language on constitutional amendments to ban gay marriage and abortion.


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LLEGÓ esta muerto, finito
By JOE CREA


WASHINGTON, D.C. — Officials with the National Latina/o Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Organization abruptly shut down the organization last week laying off all 14 of its employees in the face of a $700,000 deficit, sources familiar with the group said.

Rodger McFarlane, the executive director of the Gill Foundation, which gave LLEGÓ $90,000 this year and a total of $400,000 over the past 10 years, said that “sheer financial desperation” and a complete reliance on government contracts instead of a donor base was the death knell for the “the only national nonprofit organization devoted to representing” the needs of gay and lesbian Latinos.

“My heart is broken because we were utterly committed to the work of LLEGÓ,” McFarlane said. “No other organization can speak credibly for Latino queers. This is a tragedy. I’ve spoken to a number of other funders and we all remain committed to their mission. When the dust settles, we will talk about how we can carry on that mission.”

LLEGÓ faces an operating debt of more than $700,000 between now and next March and a $200,000 operating deficit over the next two months, McFarlane said.


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S.F., gays argue for 'marriage equality'
Court briefs charge state ban based on 'archaic stereotypes'
Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writer


A dozen gay and lesbian couples and the city of San Francisco launched a legal attack on California's ban on same-sex marriage Thursday, arguing that the law enshrines bigotry, discriminates arbitrarily and violates a constitutional right to marry one's chosen partner.

"Exclusion from marriage ... marks lesbian and gay couples as second- class citizens. It dashes their hopes and dreams, and labels them and their children as inferior, based only on archaic stereotypes,'' lawyers for the couples said in written arguments in San Francisco Superior Court.

"The time for marriage equality has arrived,'' declared lawyers from City Attorney Dennis Herrera's office, which is suing on the city's behalf to overturn the marriage law.