Last Thursday, while everyone else was watching a balloon, Keith Bardwell, a Louisiana justice of the peace, was refusing to give a marriage license to an interracial couple or to officiate their wedding ceremony because he didn't “believe in mixing the races that way.” The official's decision and subsequent justification

A bill [PDF] to allow same sex marriage in Washington, D.C., was introduced to the D.C. Council last week. It's expected to pass. As D.C. has one of the largest gay populations in the country [PDF], the bill affects many couples who couldn't marry before. But the law has its

Governor Schwarzenegger last night signed a law that makes California recognize gay marriages performed out of state. All same sex couples married out of state at any time will have all the rights of married straight couples in the state. But the law tries to play it both ways when

The Fifth Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals this week heard arguments in a case about out of state recognition of gay adoptions. The federal district court ruled in favor of the gay couple [PDF] late last year. Two men jointly adopted in New York a baby born in

The Montana Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld the parental rights [PDF] of the non-biological parent of a separated lesbian couple. What Happened The couple had raised their child together for three years. Yet because Montana, like many states, doesn't let same sex couples adopt a child together, only one of

Unfortunately in this economy, a lot of people are getting laid off. Yet if those people worked for a company with more than 20 employees, a federal law called COBRA lets the laid off employees keep their health benefits from their employers for a set amount of time. In fact,

The New York Times featured on Friday the results of a two month study on the extra lifetime costs of being gay. The reporters, Tara Bernard and Ron Lieber, tested the finances of hypothetical same sex couples in the three highest gay population: Florida, New York, and California. Their test couples

Surprise! A judge in the conservative heartland of Texas struck down yesterday the state's constitutional ban on gay marriage. But it's actually not so surprising. The judge, Tena Callahan of the 302nd Family District Court, is a Democrat, elected in 2006. Her decision doesn't represent a shift in cowboy thinking–rather,

Earlier this year, a Tennessee trial court said that a state law called a paramour clause disallowed a divorced woman with children from having her same sex partner of 10+ years sleep at her house when the children were home as well. The paramour clause won't let a divorced person

Yesterday the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida dismissed a lawsuit brought by a woman who wasn't allowed to visit her dying same sex partner in a hospital. The woman had all the proper documents, but the hospital still denied visitation, saying that “[Miami] is in