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.

5/30/2008

"With the California Supreme Court's recent decision overturning the state's ban on same-sex nuptuals, Lambda Legal's Jon Davidson and the Alliance Defense Fund's Glen Lavy debate the future of gay marriage in California and the country."

Read more on latimes.com

5/30/2008

"Legal challenges to Gov. David A. Paterson's plan to recognize same-sex marriages from other jurisdictions are likely to come thick and fast. But they face an uphill fight, legal experts said on Thursday, given New York's unusual legal terrain.

"The plan, issued by the governor's office in a memorandum on May 14, was, for starters, in one sense, unremarkable.

5/29/2008

"Two weeks after deciding same-sex couples are entitled to marry, the California Supreme Court appeared ready Wednesday to rule that physicians have no constitutional right to refuse medical treatment to gays on grounds it would violate their religious beliefs.

"The justices' inclination emerged as the state high court heard arguments in a case that pits the religious freedom of physicians against the right of gays to be free from discrimination.