Today national lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) advocacy organizations join local, state and national immigration, civil rights and LGBT groups and advocates marching for justice for all immigrants on National Immigration Day of Action.
"The federal judge presiding over a lawsuit challenging Proposition 8, California's anti-marriage equality measure, has distributed to attorneys on both sides a list of 39 questions to be addressed during closing arguments next week.
"One veteran gay legal scholar said that the breadth of inquiries posed by U.S. district judge Vaughn R. Walker means that his decision likely will be 'blockbuster in its scope.'
"The Arizona immigration law is still alive and well... and dangerous, and Lambda Legal's Jon Davidson and Francisco Dueñas says gays and lesbians need to join the fight.
"As LGBT people, we are all too familiar with unjust laws, discriminatory law enforcement, and a hostile legal system. Our country’s immigration system remains plagued with these problems, and Arizona’s shameful new immigration law compounds them in the worst possible ways."
"For the first time in a decade, Justice Department lawyers have moved to intervene in a lawsuit on behalf of a gay high school student who was beaten up for being effeminate.
"...'We haven't seen this kind of involvement in quite some time,' says Hayley Gorenberg of Lambda Legal, a national gay rights legal organization. 'It's a long time coming, and we really need it.'"
"If Howard Wax and Robert Pooley Jr. were a heterosexual couple, they could've gone to their nearest Cook County clerk's office, paid $40 for a marriage license and been wed.
"...Instead, the couple paid $10,000 for an attorney to help them roughly simulate -- using wills, trusts and powers of attorney -- the protections that marriage affords. It was a price the men, parents of 3-year-old twins, were willing to pay for peace of mind, though they admit it's far from perfect.
The so-called “ex-gays” are at it again, threatening publicly funded colleges and universities with lawsuits if they don’t promote the notion that lesbian, gay, bisexual and trangender (LGBT) people can be turned straight. Lambda Legal recently learned that Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays (PFOX) sent a letter to a university this spring, demanding the university feature its “ex-gay” propaganda on the university LGBT center’s website.
