Gay Marriage Watch

Tennessee Department of Motor Vehicles officials have denied a new driver’s license to a Tennessee woman who recently married her partner and wanted identification with her new legal name.

Traci Turpin, of Knoxville, who was married her partner in Washington, D.C. last week, returned to her home in Tennessee, where she set about changing her name on her legal documents, including her driver’s license as most newly weds would.

Ms. Turpin says the Social Security office changed her name with no questions, but said after initially issuing a new license, Department of Motor Vehicles employees decided not honor Turpin’s D.C marriage certificate and according to WUSA News, went as far as to have a DMV employee chase Turpin down as she was leaving the office in her car to demand she return the license, saying Tennessee does not recognize same sex marriages.

Full Story from Lez Get Real

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Baby Sean is only six months old, but he already knows there are two women in his life who adore him. Now, those women are asking the State of Minnesota to recognize their relationship, and their family.

“We’re not trying to be treated differently or better than anyone else,” said Lindzi Campbell. “We just want protection for our families. Stability.”

Campbell and her partner Jesse Dykhuis are one of three gay couples who filed the suit Tuesday in Hennepin County alleging, among other things, the State violated their right to marry. It’s a lawsuit two years in the making. “Two years of fundraising, relentlessly asking people for help,” said Dykhuis.

Full Story from WDIO

Click here for gay marriage resources in Minnesota.

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The Argentine Senate received Thursday a gay marriage bill approved last week by the Chamber of Deputies (la Camara de Diputados), government news agency Telam reported. The bill was assigned to the General Law Committee chaired by Liliana Negre de Alonso.

Negre de Alonso said she disagreed with giving gay couples the right to marry but added that she would not block debate on the issue.

“I will guarantee that we’ll add this matter to the agenda because I have always guaranteed the debate,” she said.

Full Story from On Top Magazine

Click here for gay marriage resources.

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CHURCH of England vicars will bless gay couples as long as they are allowed to quote Bible passages about them being abominations who must be put to death. As the House of Lords voted to allow same-sex church ceremonies, vicars said they would extend a ‘warm Christian welcome to the evil doers and their perverted bedtime acrobatics’.

Rev Denys Hatton, vicar of St Gary’s in Folkham, said: “I am more than happy to perform a gay blessing as long as I am allowed to pick the reading. And since you ask, I would kick things off with a spot of Corinthians, where St Paul makes it abundantly clear that homosexuals are ‘unrighteous’.

“Then I’d crank it up with a quote from Romans where St Paul describes them as ‘degrading’, ‘depraved’ and ‘indecent’.”

Full Story from The Daily Mash
Click here for gay marriage resources in England.
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A law allowing gay and lesbian couples to marry comes into effect on Thursday in Mexico City. The law, which was passed by the city’s local assembly in December, gives gay people full marital rights, including the right to adopt.

Several gay couples are now expected to register to get married as early as next week. Mexico City is one of the first capitals in Latin America to fully recognise gay marriages.

Judith Vazquez and partner Lol-kin Castaneda hope to become one of the first couples to marry under the new law. “It’s the end of our fight and the beginning of life in freedom in Mexico City,” Ms Vazquez told the BBC. “This is a great, historic moment for the whole of society in Mexico City,” added Ms Castaneda.

Full Story from BBC News
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Three major candidates running for governor of Rhode Island have promised to support and sign a bill allowing gay marriage if elected. General Treasurer Frank Caprio and Attorney General Patrick Lynch, both Democrats, and former Sen. Lincoln Chafee, who is running in November as an independent, made the pledge at a Statehouse rally on Wednesday before more than 200 people.

Moderate Party candicate Ken Block said through a spokeswoman that he also supports gay marriage.

Proponents of gay marriage believe the state is closer to approving the measure since Republican Gov. Don Carcieri (kuh-CHEHR’-ee), a social conservative and gay marriage opponent, can’t run again because of term limits.

Full Story from CT Now
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The same-sex Mexican wedding will be born tomorrow as a new law puts Mexico City on the front lines of the gay marriage battle raging across Latin America.

But even as gay couples line up to tie the knot, the Catholic Church and President Felipe Calderon’s conservative party are gearing up to fight the law, the Washington Post reports.

Same-sex unions are legal in Colombia, Uruguay, Brazil, and Ecuador, as well as Argentina, where two gay men wed in December, but Mexico City is the first place south of the border to formally allow gay marriage. A local cardinal blasted the law as “perverse” and Calderon said it violates the Mexican constitution, which “speaks explicitly of marriage between a man and a woman,” but advocates note there has been no popular backlash against gay marriage in the city.

Full Story from Newser
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Tory Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney should be ashamed of himself for editing out references to gay and lesbian rights in a government manual, critics say. Kenney, who represents a riding in Calgary, last June ordered references to historical achievements in gay rights edited from a manual for immigrants applying for citizenship, according to news reports from Ottawa.

A senior bureaucrat made a last-ditch effort to have the references reinserted into the new manual before it went to press in November, but Kenney refused to budge. The news report said Kenney ensured that two paragraphs from an earlier draft were not included in the new 63-page manual, which replaces a 1995 edition of the manual.

According to the Canadian Press, the draft included this paragraph under a section titled Towards a Modern Canada: “Homosexuality was decriminalized in 1969 and more recently, civil marriage rights to same-sex couples was legalized nationwide in 2005.” Under the section on citizenship rights, the earlier draft said: “Equality Rights — Canadians are protected against discrimination based on race, gender, national origin, religion, sexual orientation or age.”

Full Story from The Province
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After a series of bumps in the road, Damian Ariel Bernath and Jorge Esteban Salazar, a gay couple who had been authorized last week by Judge Elena Liberatori to get married, they finally made history today by celebrating the first gay marriage in the city of Buenos Aires.

Last Friday Judge Maria del Carmen Gioco had appealed Liberatori’s ruling by stating that her decision had to be revoked by the Contentious Administrative Court after she considered it had not made part of the process.

“Attorneys are obligated to follow due process in every case, and to make everyone comply with the law. In this case, the judge denied our unconstitutionality request, and for that reason, the attorney’s capability is limited. Hence, the judge understood it was not necessary to communicate her decision to Court,” said Florencia Kravetz, the couple’s lawyer.

Full Story from the Buenos Aires Herald
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A United Methodist congregation in Washington, D.C. has vowed to celebrate same-sex weddings, putting itself at odds with other Christian churches protesting the District of Columbia’s new marriage equality law. The pastor and 12 other ordained clergy who attend Dumbarton United Methodist Church in Georgetown said they would conduct such ceremonies after Congress failed to override D.C.’s new law on March 3. The larger United Methodist Church does not permit same-sex weddings, and no other Methodist congregation in Washington has taken the same step.

“As a pastor, I am called to extend care and grace to all people even as Jesus did,” said Rev. Mary Kay Totty, pastor at the 238-year-old church. “We celebrate love and loyalty wherever it is found.”

Dumbarton church’s stand is poles apart from the protests by other Christian churches that same-sex marriages are against biblical teachings. Catholic Charities has announced that it will close its adoption and foster care programs in the District, rather than provide services to gay and lesbian couples. Some Christian ministers have rallied against the marriage equality law.

Full Story from PR Newswire
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