Watch Minnesota Join the Wave Of Marriage Equality
On Tuesday, Minnesota became the 12th state in the nation to legalize gay marriage. Watch it join the marriage equality wave on our updated map GIF.
Advertisement
France finally became the 14th country to legalize gay marriage on Saturday when President Francois Hollande signed the bill that legalizes same sex marriage into law. But ugly protests that have marked the legal process will continue even now that the bill is passed.
On Tuesday, Minnesota became the 12th state in the nation to legalize gay marriage. Watch it join the marriage equality wave on our updated map GIF.
In a historic vote early Monday evening, the Minnesota State Senate voted 37-30 to pass same-sex marriage, setting the stage for Governor Mark Dayton to sign the law heading into a big summer for the movement nationwide — including the first legal same-sex marriages in the state. Here's a look at the next steps.
Delaware legalized gay marriage Tuesday afternoon, making it the 11th state to do so, and only days after Rhode Island did the same. Here's our updated GIF map showing that the pro-gay marriage wave has a long way to go to undo two anti-gay marriage waves ushered in by Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.
The masters of the heartwarming, love-your-children promotional video at Google are tugging at the heartstrings of the American family once again with a new Mother's Day spot called "Here's to the Moms" — and they mean all moms.
One important fight in this week's dizzying array of amendments to the bill is simply about extending current laws to gay people. "Guns, gays and immigration — it's too much," one senator reportedly told the White House. "I can be with you on one or two of them, but not all three." What about two in one bill? Does that have a better chance? Or a better chance to kill the whole thing?
Rhode Island became the tenth state in the nation to legalize gay marriage on Thursday evening, when Governor Lincoln Chafee signed the recently passed bill into law. The final vote wasn't even close.
One way to understand how hard it is for Republicans to agree amongst themselves on immigration reform is to look at what's controversial in the Senate — and compare all of that to what's controversial in the House. Because they are very, very different things.
As of Wednesday morning, at midnight, same-sex couples in Colorado were finally allowed to get a civil union — and, more importantly, to get that union recognized by the state. These are just some of the hundreds of happy couples from Denver and beyond.
Following a six-month campaign that revived the country's conservative movement — and inspired hundreds of colorful and often revealing counter-protests — France became the 14th country in the world to legalize same-sex marriage on Tuesday.
In at least one demographic, there is unanimity on same-sex marriage: members of the Republican National Committee. As you might expect, they're opposed. Officially.
Gay marriage is suddenly popular. But what our map GIF shows is that this wave of support for gay rights follows two large anti-gay rights wave, first under President Bill Clinton and then under President George W. Bush.
Uruguay became the second predominantly Roman Catholic country to legalize gay marriage on Wednesday night, sending cheers through the streets of Monte Video. Stateside, the mood remains sober.
Since senators' announcements of support for gay marriage have gotten dull, the hot new trend in politics is to try and predict which senator will be next to come out into the open on the issue. We looked at the data.
When Democratic senators Heidi Heitkamp and Joe Donnelly said Friday they were backing same-sex marriage, it was clear their "evolution" would carry less political import than it would have during last year's reelection campaign. But there's no better example of the incentive some Democrats still have to oppose gay marriage than in Arkansas, where Mark Pryor is up for reelection.
America has officially become indifferent to Democratic senators declaring support for gay marriage. On Thursday afternoon, Bill Nelson of Florida indicated that he'd switched positions. Few seemed to care.
The Democratic Senator from Delaware and the Republican from Illinois today joined 48 of their colleagues in support of gay marriage. Here's a breakdown of how they made their voices heard, and the reactions thereafter.
According to Bill Kristol and Rick Santorum and other pundits, there's one reason for a surge in American support for gay marriage: television. But the question is: Which television show? We crunched the numbers. Sort of.
Sue Everhart, chairwoman of the Georgia Republican Party, has drawn a line deep in the sand. Gay marriage, she told the Marietta Daily Journal, is simply a tool for defrauding the government of public benefits. And obviously any situation in which fraud could occur should be banned.
A big week for gay rights in Washington was a big one for the entertainment world, too, and it looks like the NFL could have its first gay player come out of the closet in time for Week One of the new season. Here's a rundown of the locker rooms where the NFL's mystery man might feel welcome — and less so.
The Human Rights Campaign's social media blitz was so effective that Facebook engineers decided to map the portions of the United States, county by county, where users were most likely to change their avatar.
The push and pull between the Republican Party's members who are more and less enlightened on matters of race has been going on for a long time. And in just the last decade, the GOP has seen plenty of two-steps-forward-three-steps-back moments when it's tried to minority outreach programs.
Richard Lawson: Manically scrolling through the comments section on National Review Online and Fox Nation and, occasionally, less one-sided outlets has taken up a lot of my idle (and, yes, some working) time this week. Boy do people have a lot of awful things to say about gay marriage!
Time's new covers are great, but that we need them, regardless of the progress that's been made, means gay marriage hasn't, in fact, quite "won" yet. It won't have won until marriage is legal for same-sex couples throughout the U.S., and recognized federally, too. It won't have won until "gay marriage" is no different than any marriage.
At this point, everybody's seen the pink equals sign on the red background show up in her Facebook or Twitter feed. Not everyone's convinced that it's useful, though.
Courtroom sketch artist Arthur Lien is one of the few people who can offer a true window into the closed-door hearings of the nation's high tribunal, the man whose brush can paint emotion onto the most emotionless figures in the land. He talked to us about the gay marriage hearings, and his favorite justice to draw.
Two days of historic Supreme Court arguments on gay marriage have cheered legal advocates of gay marriage — who think the end of California's Prop 8 and the Defense of Marriage Act is near — but legal experts say the rulings they expect would mean legal chaos for gay couples.
Here are all the words from inside the Supreme Court's hearing on the Defense of Marriage Act, with justices' questions highlighted so you don't have to read through all the tea leaves.
North Carolina Sen. Kay Hagan is the latest Senator to publicly support gay marriage posting on Facebook that "banning gay marriage is bad for families," even though she's up for reelection in 2014 in a state that just passed a state constitutional amendment banning gay marriage.
Many politicians and pundits have noticed that gay marriage has become so popular that they have to evolve on the issue to stay relevant. But there are still several conservatives who do have strong feelings. There are a few distinct arguments against gay marriage, and they don't always mesh well together.
Today's oral arguments are a big deal, compounded all the more by the will-they-or-won't-they hedge from Day 1. But if you haven't been following this Defense of Marriage Act case for the past four years, or if the last 24 hours have been a little overwhelming with all the legalese, don't worry. We've got you covered.
You can measure how quickly public opinion on gay rights has changed by looking at poll numbers, or you can see it on the covers of the national newsweeklies.
If you took any random nine Americans matching the demographics of the Supreme Court, would they support making gay marriage legal?
Congratulations to Montana's Jon Tester, the latest Democratic senator to clamber onto the back of the gay marriage train as it leaves the station. We've gone ahead and compiled some other popular and/or inevitable things he might want to look into.
The Supreme Court heard arguments Tuesday, and here's the transcript, featuring key sections on support regarding the gay marriage ban — to get a sense of which way the justices might be leaning, or at least a better sense than you can from pundits.
Clinton signed the federal Defense of Marriage Act in the middle of the night in 1996 because he'd been burned by supporting allowing gays in the military, and he didn't want to get burned again. He's been doing penance for it ever since, and times have certainly changed.
As word streamed out from a confusing day, the tea leaves pretty much read that the Proposition 8 ban will likely not be struck down — and that the key justice, Anthony Kennedy, may push for the Court to dismiss Prop. 8 or hand it back to the lower courts in California, wary of "uncharted waters." Ladies and gentlemen — and ladies and ladies, and gentlemen and gentlemen — the Supremes aren't ready to rule yet.
Here's a guide to keeping track of the historic proceedings, beginning with today's oral arguments on Hollingsworth v. Perry (aka Proposition 8) with expectations high and low, conclusions fast and slow, on social media and by way of a drinking game — with coffee, but still.
Mark Warner became the latest member of the Senate to announce his support for gay marriage Monday afternoon — and perhaps the last to do so with any effectiveness. In the recent history of buzzer-beaters for political benefit, others have not been quite so advantageous on the once hot-button issue.
In the coming days, the Supreme Court will be hearing arguments on both a challenge to the federal Defense of Marriage Act and to California's Proposition 8. In a very real way, we could see the beginning of the end of the marriage equality struggle this week. Here's a look at what's next, because within that optimism there is also some confusion.
In 1967, a liberal Supreme Court bucked public opinion in throwing out laws banning interracial marriage. When the current Supreme Court hears arguments on two gay marriage cases beginning on Tuesday, the opposite may occur.
In a column in today's issue of Yale Daily News, Will Portman writes about his coming out process, the one that led to his father, Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio, to supporting same-sex marriage. The younger Portman's column is clear and concise, though it raises more questions about how his father sought to publicly portray this ideological shift.
Next week, the Supreme Court will hear arguments on the two gay marriage cases in front of it. Either decision could legalize the practice in one quick blow. So a bumper crop of organizations and activists are weighing in now, while there's still a reason to.
As the Republican party continues to re-evaluate itself this week, Rove's role is looking increasingly dangerous when you compare his predictions to the facts on gay marriage, the Iraq war, the 2012 election, and more.
Explaining that he wanted to preempt liberal critiques of his speech, one of which (he predicted) was his lack of new ideas for the Republican Party, Rubio declared, "We don't a new idea. The idea is called America, and it still works." Also: water joke.
Bill Clinton does most things right. His entire life, the former president's done nothing but succeed tremendously at everything he does. But even Bubba messes up sometimes.
A new poll from San Francisco's Field Research Corporation shows support for gay marriage in the state surpassing 60 percent for the first time.
Another 214 people have filed briefs on the gay marriage cases that the Supreme Court will soon consider and, well, two of them work in football stadiums and the other 212 work on Capitol Hill. And a surprising number of Congressman didn't join them.
Today's announcement that the administration will file an amicus brief with the Supreme Court asking that it overturn California's ban on gay marriage suggests that the president's support — once considered lacking — has now checked nearly every box.
A summary of the best reads found behind the paywall of The New York Times.
Using a Public Policy Polling poll on food issues and Pew data on gay marriage opinions, Dave Gilson of Mother Jones found that the people who won't try sushi are, age-wise at least, the same people who don't approve of gay marriage.
Have a story we missed? A link we have to click? A sharp opinion about the news? Instead of waiting for us to post it, tell us on the Open Wire.
Submit your news and ideas | See all reader postsThe Atlantic Wire is your authoritative guide to the news and ideas that matter most right now. Our team tracks newsmakers and opinions across the entire media spectrum: newspapers, web sites, television, radio and magazines.
But we do more than just collect information. By synthesizing, analyzing and summarizing what’s out there, and adding new information when we can, we are a news engine that gives you a quick and valuable account of the issues of the day.
Have a hot tip? A story we missed? Tell us on the Open Wire
How to send us editorial or technical feedback
Get Five Best Columns in your inbox each morning (preview)
