An out-of-state group working against gay marriage has spent more money on television ads for a Sept. 1 Iowa House race than either candidate has raised in cash, reports filed Thursday show.

Democratic House District 90 candidate Curt Hanson raised $42,882 to compete in the special election, while GOP candidate Stephen Burgmeier raised $63,101, the reports show.

A disclosure report filed by the New Jersey-based National Organization for Marriage, a group that opposes marriage for same-sex couples, has spent $86,080 on television ads in support of Burgmeier, according to a report filed Aug. 20.

Full Story from the Des Moines Register

Planning to marry your partner? Click here for gay marriage resources in Iowa.

To subscribe to this blog, use the rss feed on the right. You can also email us at info@purpleunions.com with “subscribe blog” as the subject. Or find us on Facebook – just search for Gay Marriage Watch (you’ll see our b/w wedding pic overlooking the Ferry Building and Bay Bridge in SF). We’re also tweeting daily at http://www.twitter.com/gaymarriagewatc.

A group supporting Washington’s expanded gay-rights law has sued the secretary of state in an attempt to keep Referendum 71 from qualifying for the November ballot.

Washington Families Standing Together says it’s concerned the Secretary of State’s Office has accepted signatures that should have been rejected for the referendum, which seeks to put the domestic-partnership law up for a public vote.

Thursday, the same day the lawsuit was filed, the state Public Disclosure Commission (PDC) decided the group backing R-71 would not be exempt from disclosing the identities of its donors.

Full Story from The Seattle Times

Planning to marry your partner? Click here for gay marriage resources in Washington.

To subscribe to this blog, use the rss feed on the right. You can also email us at info@purpleunions.com with “subscribe blog” as the subject. Or find us on Facebook – just search for Gay Marriage Watch (you’ll see our b/w wedding pic overlooking the Ferry Building and Bay Bridge in SF). We’re also tweeting daily at http://www.twitter.com/gaymarriagewatc.

So, it’s officially the end of August, the time when everyone thinks: “What did I do the past three months?” True, you didn’t go camping in Yosemite, you rainchecked seeing the Eiffel Tower with your family, and you told everyone that you went to Venice (California, not Italy, but you’ll make sure they don’t find out the difference). But let’s be optimistic: The summer’s far from over. So instead of going to Europe, Japan, or, the most popular choices this season — North Korea, Iran, Afghanistan — why not stay in the U.S. and squeeze in a few short trips before Autumn?

Better yet, why not travel to a destination that’s home to one of the country’s most controversial social issues? If you’re tired of street protests and seeing friends and co-workers in same-sex relationships that cannot lead to a legal wedding in one of our Most Enlightened 44 states, travel to one of the six (by next January — with no vetos, that is) where a couple can enjoy such a union.

In that spirit, here are some same-sex-marriage travel tips*:

Full Story from The Faster Times

Planning to marry your partner? Click here for gay marriage resources.

To subscribe to this blog, use the rss feed on the right. You can also email us at info@purpleunions.com with “subscribe blog” as the subject. Or find us on Facebook – just search for Gay Marriage Watch (you’ll see our b/w wedding pic overlooking the Ferry Building and Bay Bridge in SF). We’re also tweeting daily at http://www.twitter.com/gaymarriagewatc.

The ACT Government says it might vote against the Greens’ proposal to grant legal status to civil union commitment ceremonies, despite it being ACT Labor policy.

Homosexual Labor minister Andrew Barr, who plans to register a civil partnership with his long-term partner Anthony Toms later this year, said yesterday he was prepared to go against his personal view and vote against the Greens’ Bill if Cabinet decided to do so.

”I’m a minister in a government, that’s the responsibility you have as a member of Cabinet and as a member of the Labor Party,” Mr Barr said.

Full Story from The Canberra Times

Planning to marry your partner? Click here for gay marriage resources in Australia.

To subscribe to this blog, use the rss feed on the right. You can also email us at info@purpleunions.com with “subscribe blog” as the subject. Or find us on Facebook – just search for Gay Marriage Watch (you’ll see our b/w wedding pic overlooking the Ferry Building and Bay Bridge in SF). We’re also tweeting daily at http://www.twitter.com/gaymarriagewatc.

…Something needs to be done to bridge the gay gap in the Hispanic community.

It’s an important bridge to gap. I was a witness at the same-sex marriage of my good friend Marcela Davison Aviles [CEO of the Mexican Heritage Corporation] and I’ll never forget the hurt in her voice when Prop 8 [California’s anti-gay-marriage initiative] passed. It makes you feel bad when you’re dis-liked, it hurts your feelings in a terrible, terrible way.

I know that one of the reasons it turned out the way it did was because a lot more Hispanics came out to vote that year, because they wanted to vote for Obama. But how can you have a full and authentic expression of who you are if you have to live that way and hide it? As long as you have to pretend, it’s like ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,’ – and who wants to live that way?

Full Story from Planet Out

Planning to marry your partner? Click here for gay marriage resources.

To subscribe to this blog, use the rss feed on the right. You can also email us at info@purpleunions.com with “subscribe blog” as the subject. Or find us on Facebook – just search for Gay Marriage Watch (you’ll see our b/w wedding pic overlooking the Ferry Building and Bay Bridge in SF). We’re also tweeting daily at http://www.twitter.com/gaymarriagewatc.

Roman Catholic bishops in New Jersey have begun a new campaign opposing same-sex marriage.

The push comes in anticipation of a possible vote on the issue by state lawmakers after the November election.

At the bishops’ direction, a 2,300-word letter was distributed in parish bulletins last Sunday. It notes long-standing Catholic teaching that marriage is “the union of one man and one woman.”

Full Story from Philly.com

Planning to marry your partner? Click here for gay marriage resources in New Jersey.

To subscribe to this blog, use the rss feed on the right. You can also email us at info@purpleunions.com with “subscribe blog” as the subject. Or find us on Facebook – just search for Gay Marriage Watch (you’ll see our b/w wedding pic overlooking the Ferry Building and Bay Bridge in SF). We’re also tweeting daily at http://www.twitter.com/gaymarriagewatc.

Last week offered an exciting Top Chef two-fer: The season finale of Top Chef Masters, which quietly asserted itself as perhaps my favorite episode in franchise history (as I wrote in that blog, it was like watching a real-life, extended cut of the climactic meal in Big Night), and the premiere of this season’s Top Chef, which introduced new blood, a new city, and lots of new gambling-themed gimmicks. So it was perhaps inevitable that Week Two would be a big comedown for your friendly recapper, because I’m already wrung out from last week’s finale/premiere double bill and because I’m looking at a chaff-filled 16 contestants clogging up the screen. Who are these people? Why should I care about them? Could someone wake me when the six or seven who clearly have no chance are finally eliminated.

All right, enough whining. I press on.

Tonight wasn’t a terribly memorable hour, with a couple of rote challenges and not too many juicy developments. If it’s remembered for anything, it will probably be the mild controversy about the bachelor/bachelorette party Elimination challenge, which didn’t sit well with Ashley, who’s a lesbian and therefore not happy having to honor an institution in which she and others gay and lesbians (including two others from this season’s group) cannot legally take part. I really don’t feel like dipping my toe in this issue—the obnoxious comment board flare-ups over Ted Kennedy’s death have been unsettling enough for one day—but Ashley’s objections were surprisingly strong and perhaps flipped the script a bit on “defense of marriage” types who are always fretting about how the institution” is threatened.

Full Story from AVClub.com

Planning to marry your partner? Click here for gay marriage resources.

To subscribe to this blog, use the rss feed on the right. You can also email us at info@purpleunions.com with “subscribe blog” as the subject. Or find us on Facebook – just search for Gay Marriage Watch (you’ll see our b/w wedding pic overlooking the Ferry Building and Bay Bridge in SF). We’re also tweeting daily at http://www.twitter.com/gaymarriagewatc.

The measure is known as the Designated Beneficiary Agreement. If enacted into law, it will allow individuals who enter into this legal union to receive benefits that range from health and life insurance to GovGuam employee retiree benefits. Bill 212 was introduced by Senator Jim Espaldon, who called the legislation an alternative to Bill 185, introduced by Vice-Speaker BJ Cruz as The Domestic Partnership Bill. Tonight’s meeting is to receive a consensus on the legislation from Guam’s gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community.

Said Cruz, using an automotive analogy, “It is like asking for an Infinity, compromising down to an Ultima, saying you’d accept a Sentra, and now we are just taking bus passes to get where we need to go.” The vice-speaker of the 30th Guam Legislature contends the Designated Beneficiary Agreement is a sellout to the GLBT community’s initial desire to have a bill that provides them with all of the same legal rights that heterosexual couples enjoy via a legal partnership.

Senator Sspaldon sees it otherwise, saying, “I listened to those arguments and came up with this Bill 212, and I hope it’s a compromise where both parties are satisfied.” He reasoned that his bill is truly a viable alternative to the controversial Domestic Partnership Bill, which was harshly criticized by the Catholic Church, but supported overall by Guam’s GLBT community.

Full Story from KUAM.com

Planning to marry your partner? Click here for gay marriage resources.

To subscribe to this blog, use the rss feed on the right. You can also email us at info@purpleunions.com with “subscribe blog” as the subject. Or find us on Facebook – just search for Gay Marriage Watch (you’ll see our b/w wedding pic overlooking the Ferry Building and Bay Bridge in SF). We’re also tweeting daily at http://www.twitter.com/gaymarriagewatc.

For a month, rotating teams of gay-rights supporters and opponents have crowded into a basement room, watching as state workers check every signature on a referendum that seeks to overturn the latest expansion of gay rights. They have not become friends. In fact, they’ve had complaints.

Religious conservatives with Protect Marriage Washington, the group trying to put Referendum 71 on the ballot, speak of a chumminess between elections workers and gay-rights supporters that excludes them.

They’ve complained about signature checkers who wear headphones while they work, saying the music could be distracting. They’ve accused staff of speeding up the count, which they believe has led to the rejection of more signatures. They’ve complained that supervisors have rolled their eyes at their concerns.

Full Story from the Seattle Times

Planning to marry your partner? Click here for gay marriage resources in Washington.

To subscribe to this blog, use the rss feed on the right. You can also email us at info@purpleunions.com with “subscribe blog” as the subject. Or find us on Facebook – just search for Gay Marriage Watch (you’ll see our b/w wedding pic overlooking the Ferry Building and Bay Bridge in SF). We’re also tweeting daily at http://www.twitter.com/gaymarriagewatc.

Tom Schaller is commended for his thoughtful commentary in the Baltimore Sun regarding marriage equality for same-gender couples (“Md. should be a leader on gay marriage,” Aug. 25). While serving as Prince George’s County executive and governor of Maryland, I was a forceful advocate for enacting laws that ban discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

Despite our successes, however, in addressing employment, housing and public accommodations discrimination against gays and lesbians, I was firm in my statements that I believed “marriage should be between a man and a woman.” This was especially true during my 1998 re-election campaign.

I was wrong! Allowing same-gender couples to join in the institution of marriage, and to experience the commitment and security of being legally married, does nothing to diminish or alter the institution of marriage itself. It does, however, promote healthy, stable families.

Full Story from the Baltimore Sun

Planning to marry your partner? Click here for gay marriage resources in Maryland.

To subscribe to this blog, use the rss feed on the right. You can also email us at info@purpleunions.com with “subscribe blog” as the subject. Or find us on Facebook – just search for Gay Marriage Watch (you’ll see our b/w wedding pic overlooking the Ferry Building and Bay Bridge in SF). We’re also tweeting daily at http://www.twitter.com/gaymarriagewatc.