Actions Speak Louder Than Words: How the Obama Administration Has Worked Behind the Scenes to Advance Marriage Equality

Photo Credit: ShutterStock.com

Ultimately, it's the courts that will ultimately make marriage equality the law of the land in all 50 states.

May 18, 2012

The Obama administration has a pretty good record on LGBT issues, but it has also had a sometimes contentious relationship with gay rights activists.

Even in the wake of Obama's “evolution” on marriage last week, some critics seized on his statement that the states should decide whether to offer gay and lesbian Americans equal treatment under the law.

Yet it is only the courts – not the executive or legislative branches – that can require the states to honor same-sex marriages. And actions speak louder than words.

This week, Chris Geidner, senior political editor for the LGBT magazine Metro Weekly, appeared on the AlterNet Radio Hour to highlight where the administration has missed opportunities to advance gay civil rights, and to explain how the administration has been working to advance marriage equality nationwide in the courts – out of the glare of the political press. Below is a lightly edited transcript of the interview (you can listen to the whole show here).   READ MORE

Gay Marriage Effort Attracts a Novel Group of Donors

Rob Reiner. (Photo: Andy and Mike / Flickr

Saturday, 24 March 2012 09:28  
By Adam Nagourney, Brooks Barnes, 
The New York Times News Service | Report 

Los Angeles - On a warm Friday afternoon three years ago, Rob Reiner, the director, arrived for lunch at the Beverly Hills estate of David Geffen, the entertainment mogul. Mr. Reiner and his political adviser, Chad H. Griffin, had spent six months drafting an ambitious legal campaign aimed at persuading the United States Supreme Court to establish a constitutional right of same-sex marriage.

Mr. Reiner, joined by Mr. Griffin and Mr. Reiner’s wife, Michele, told Mr. Geffen they would need $3 million to challenge Proposition 8, a California voter initiative approved the previous November banning same-sex marriage. He informed Mr. Geffen that they had recruited two renowned lawyers, David Boies, a Democrat, and Theodore B. Olson, a Republican, to argue the case.

“Our feeling is not to go state by state,” Mr. Reiner said. “Our strategy is to make this wind up in the United States Supreme Court and have this a settled issue for all time.”

Mr. Geffen asked few questions as they sat in the dining room off his screening room, with a sweeping view down his sculptured estate. He agreed before the dessert arrived to raise the money. “I said I’d give them half the money and raise the other half,” Mr. Geffen recalled. Mr. Geffen wrote a check for $1.5 million and asked Steve Bing, a friend and producer, to make up the rest.   READ MORE

Gay marriage: Roman Catholic archbishops step up fight

The letter from Archbishops Nichols and Smith will
be read to congregations across England and Wales

The Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales is intensifying its campaign against the government's plan to legalise same-sex marriage.

In a letter to be read in 2,500 parish churches later, the Church's two most senior archbishops say the change would reduce the significance of marriage.

The letter says Roman Catholics have a duty to make sure it does not happen.
The government wants to introduce gay marriage by 2015, but says churches would not have to perform weddings.

Last week Cardinal Keith O'Brien, the leader of the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland, said the "grotesque" plans would "shame the United Kingdom in the eyes of the world" if implemented.
And on Friday, in a speech to visiting US bishops, Pope Benedict XVI warned of "powerful political and cultural currents seeking to alter the legal definition of marriage", in the wake of the US states of Washington and Maryland legalising same-sex marriage.
  READ MORE

US gay marriage: law passes Maryland but vetoed in New Jersey

Chris Christie said that gay marriage was an issue
for a referendum, not the legislature Photo: GETTY

The movement for same sex-marriage in the US lurched one step forward and took another step step back last night as Maryland's House of Delegates approved a bill but New Jersey governor Chris Christie vetoed a similar law in his own state. 

 7:00AM GMT 18 Feb 2012

Legislators in Maryland voted 71-67 to allow gay marriage.

A similar vote failed last year when a number of black Democrats refused to back the legislation.

Led by Governor Martin O'Malley, the party's leadership held together a coalition to reach the critical threshold.

The bill is expected to pass easily through the Senate, which approved a gay marriage act last year, and is expected to reach Mr O'Malley's desk for final approval soon.

The legislation was hailed as a major victory by gay rights advocates and will make Maryland the eighth US state to support gay marriage joining New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire, Iowa and Washington State.    READ MORE