In the News

9/15/2008

"Eleven advocacy groups are taking issue with a claim that the East Meadow School District does not consider itself an 'education corporation or association.'

"The district made that claim in its appeal of a state Division of Human Rights decision that East Meadow violated human rights law in not allowing a hearing-impaired boy to bring his service dog to school.

9/2/2008

"Governor David A. Paterson was acting within his powers when he issued an executive order requiring government agencies to recognize same-sex marriages performed outside the state, a court ruled on Tuesday.

"The decision, issued by Justice Lucy A. Billings of State Supreme Court in the Bronx is the latest in a string of rulings by state courts that have upheld the right of same-sex couples who were married in other jurisdictions to have their marital status recognized in New York.

7/23/2008

"One of the nation's leading legal advocacy groups for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community has urged the Newfield Central School District to reconsider its successful jurisdictional challenge of human rights law protection for students on the grounds that it will end a method of addressing discrimination for LGBT students.

7/23/2008

"A former state employee claimed Tuesday in a federal lawsuit that top Georgia legislative officials fired her because she said she would come to work dressed as a female as she prepared for a sex-change procedure to transform from man to woman.

"Vandy Beth Glenn said Tuesday she was illegally fired from her job as a legislative editor for the Georgia General Assembly after she told her boss she was going to live as a woman full time.

7/3/2008

"When Dick Myers heard that California was going to start issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples, he and his partner of nearly 13 years considered traveling there to get married.

"That is until Myers and his partner learned of state law that makes it a crime for Wisconsin residents to enter into marriage in another state if the marriage would be prohibited in Wisconsin.

"The law imposes a penalty for those who enter into a marriage that's prohibited or declared void in Wisconsin of up to $10,000 and nine months in prison.

7/1/2008

"A same-sex couple in New York says an Arizona-based Web site has barred them from posting an adoption profile.

"The advocacy group Lambda Legal said Tuesday it has complained to the New York attorney general's office about Adoption Profiles, LLC and Adoption Media, LLC.

"Lambda Legal says Rosario Gennaro and Alexander Gardner were certified by a court as qualified adoptive parents. But when they decided to seek an online match with ParentProfiles.com, they learned that applicants were required to be 'husband and wife.'"

6/26/08

"The family vacation cruise that Janice Langbehn, her partner Lisa Marie Pond and three of their four children set out to take in February 2007 was designed to be a celebration of the lesbian couple's 18 years together.

"But when Pond suffered a massive stroke onboard before the ship left port and was rushed to Jackson Memorial Hospital, administrators refused to let Langbehn into the Pond's hospital room. A social worker told them they were in an 'anti-gay city and state.'

6/19/2008

"On the heels of its ruling on same-sex marriage, California's highest court will decide another potentially landmark civil rights case: whether doctors can refuse to treat certain patients for religious reasons.

"The case reaches back nearly 10 years, to when Guadalupe "Lupita" Benítez of Oceanside was trying to conceive. Benítez, who is gay, says doctors violated her civil rights because they refused her a fertility treatment, saying it was against their religion to perform insemination on a lesbian.

6/9/2008

"Virginia's highest court ruled Friday that the state must enforce a Vermont court order awarding child-visitation rights to a mother's former lesbian partner.

"The Virginia Supreme Court rejected Lisa Miller's claim that a lower court improperly ignored a Virginia law and a state constitutional amendment that prohibit same-sex unions and the recognition of such arrangements from other states.

6/3/2008

"Proponents of broad new protections for transgender individuals in Montgomery County were back in court yesterday, trying to block a referendum that seeks to repeal the law passed last fall by the County Council.