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The U.S. Justice Department has moved to dismiss the first gay marriage case filed in federal court, saying it is not the right venue to tackle legal questions raised by a couple already married in California. The motion, filed on June 11, argued that the case of Arthur Smelt and Christopher Hammer does not address the right of gay couples to marry but rather questions whether their marriage must be recognized nationwide by states that have not approved gay marriage. "This case does not call upon the Court to pass judgment ... on the legal or moral right of same-sex couples, such as plaintiffs here, to be married," the motion states. "Plaintiffs are married, and their challenge to the federal Defense of Marriage Act ("DOMA") poses a different set of questions."

The government said Smelt and Hammer seek a ruling on "whether by virtue of their marital status they are constitutionally entitled to acknowledgment of their union by states that do not recognize same-sex marriage, and whether they are similarly entitled to certain federal benefits. "Under the law binding on this Court, the answer to these questions must be no," the motion states. The 54-page document traces the history of the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) passed by Congress in 1996 at a time when states and their citizens were just beginning to address the legal status of same-sex marriage.

The case was originally filed last year in California State Court before heading to federal court. It claims violation of a number of federal rights including the right to privacy, the right to travel and the right of free expression under the First Amendment. The government's filing said the suit would fail under each of those grounds. While it addressed each argument, it claimed the suit should be dismissed for lack of standing by the plaintiffs to bring the claim in federal court.

The Supreme Court is entering an emotionally charged dispute between the grieving father of a Marine who died in Iraq and the anti-gay protesters who picket military funerals with inflammatory messages like "Thank God for dead soldiers."

... Adm. Mike Mullen called for gay men and lesbians to serve openly in the military...between 61 percent and 75 percent depending on the poll - now share his point of view. Most Americans recognize that being gay is not a "lifestyle" but an immutable identity, and that outlawing discrimination against gay people who want to serve their country is, as the admiral said, "the right thing to do."

....more heterosexuals have learned that they have gay relatives, friends, neighbors, teachers and co-workers. It is hard to deny our own fundamental rights to those we know, admire and love....as recently as 2004 - when Karl Rove and George W. Bush ran a national campaign exploiting fear of gay people - there is now little political advantage to spewing homophobia.

Now that explicit anti-gay animus is an albatross, those who oppose gay civil rights are driven to invent ever loopier rationales for denying those rights, whether in the military or in marriage....the flimsy rhetorical camouflage must be stripped away to expose the prejudice that lies beneath....the most common last-ditch argument for preserving "don't ask"...is to protect "troop morale and cohesion." Every known study says this argument is a canard, as do the real-life examples of the many armies with openly gay troops... But the argument does carry a telling historical pedigree. When Harry Truman ordered the racial integration of the American military in 1948, Congressional opponents (then mainly Southern Democrats) embraced an antediluvian Army prediction from 1940 stating that such a change would threaten national defense by producing "situations destructive to morale." History will sweep this bogus argument away now as it did then.

Those opposing same-sex marriage are just as eager to mask their bigotry....The more bigotry pushed out of the closet for all voters to see, the more likely it is that Americans will be moved to grant overdue full citizenship to gay Americans. It won't happen overnight, any more than full civil rights for African-Americans immediately followed Truman's desegregation of the armed forces.

The archbishop of Denver on Tuesday defended a decision by a Catholic school not to allow two children to continue as students because their parents are a lesbian couple.

A parliamentary maneuver today in the House of Delegates will prevent the General Laws Committee from reconsidering a bill to include gays in the state's anti-discrimination policy.

Angelisa Young and Sinjoyla Townsend were the first couple to marry. They wed at the office of the Human Rights Campaign, along with two other couples.

To those within the Black community who still see homosexuality as a White thing, right before your eyes is the truth of the opposite. When you support heterosexual privilege, you are oppressing your own people. Even though the media is content to paint the GLBT community as a monolithic group filled with race and class privilege, today stand aware that they are as diverse as any other group on the planet. The monolithic identity is the oppressors truth and it flourishes to keep us separated from each other.

ABC News reports on Life & Style's insinuation that gender expression may be parent-based, rather than child-based self-expression. "Wearing boys' clothes and a new boyish haircut, Shiloh Jolie-Pitt looks more like famous father Brad Pitt these days than equally famous mom Angelina Jolie. The 3-year-old's tomboyish look has tongues wagging, and last week's cover of Life & Style magazine asking, Why Is Angelina Turning Shiloh into a Boy?"

Tolerance is something we endure. Tolerance is the trial, the chore, the annoyance. It's something we wish would go away, something we avoid exposure to as much as possible. Something we deal with only as little as we can.

Some time ago, on my LJ, I made a promise to myself. I promised myself that I would be as uncloseted as possible. I wasn't going to announce the wonders of manlove at the Westboro Baptist Church Guns & Flamethrower convention, no but I promised to avoid the little lies, the evasions, the endless avoidances and silences I used to keep me within the shadows of the closet..

And I was surprised - because of the number of people who knew I was gay, apparently had no problems with my being gay and reacted well to me coming out - were suddenly a lot more hostile to my STAYING out. They had no problems with my gayness - just with my being gay. Talking about Beloved, or what we had done on the weekend or my life in general was seen as provocative. I was annoying them by not hiding my gayness, despite my topics being exactly the same as theirs.

It's a day of wedding bells for some gay couples in Washington. Tuesday is the first day same-sex couples can pick up marriage licenses and tie the knot in the city.

Tony Abbott, seemingly always keen to project a macho image, has upset gays with his "reactionary" comments / The Daily Telegraph Abbott put on the spot on gay comments Believes homosexuals challenge orthodoxy Rights groups accuse him of living in 1950s TONY Abbott has defended feeling "threatened" by homosexuality, saying gay people challenged ...

Transmen or female-to-males are men who were born biologically female but have taken steps to align their gender identity with their presentation.

Sen. Roy Ashburn said he felt compelled to address the rumors. He did so Monday morning in a radio interview.

"I am gay. And so, those are the words that have been so difficult for me for so long," Ashburn said during an interview on AM1180 KERN in Bakersfield

Denver Channel : A preschooler is caught in the middle of a fight between religion and sexuality.

I'm most interested to see how gay-rights critics respond to a--joke?--draft initiative sent to the media this morning that, if approved by voters and the courts, would give homosexual Utahns three options: move out-of-state on your own, take state-provided transportation out of state, or enter homo-rehab.

Am I surprised to discover that yet another legislator has been exposed as a hypocrite? That one more anti-gay rights politician turns out to be a closeted homosexual? That critical votes on human rights and equality depend on people who lie to everyone around them, and who vote with their personality disorder instead of their intellect? Nah.

That Sean Hayes is gay is Hollywood's worst kept secret - circa 1998, when his character Jack debuted on Will & Grace. Played with a natural flamboyance, Hayes portrayal of the serially out-of-work mooching neighbor was either an exercise in extreme method acting, or just an extension of Hayes' true self. Or somewhere in the middle. But with an upcoming Broadway turn opposite Kristin Chenoweth in Promises, Promises, he's acknowledging what nobody pretended was even something worth hiding: that he's a proud, Emmy-winning gay actor. But damn you for making him say it aloud.

A female Michigan couple tests the boundaries of parental custody - with a lawsuit brought by the non-biological mother of their daughter and twin boys. It's a battle that may reach the Michigan Supreme Court - and possibly secure joint custody rights for nonbiological, unmarried partners, gay or straight.

New Hampshire state Rep. Nancy Elliott, at a recent state Judiciary Committee meeting on a proposal to repeal the state's same-sex marriage bill, described the issue of gay marriage as follows: "taking the penis of one man and putting it in the rectum of another man and wriggling it around in excrement." Rep. Elliott continued, irrelevantly, "and you have to think, I'm not sure, would I allow that to be done to me?" (Elliott has since apologized for the portion of her remarks in which she falsely claimed that because gay marriage had been legalized, New Hampshire's fifth-graders were being taught to have anal sex in the public schools.) Last month at the trial over California's ban on same-sex marriage, one witness who supported the measure testified that homosexuals are "12 times more likely to molest children." And recently, while addressing the proposed repeal of the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy, Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council warned Larry King if gay soldiers could serve in the military, "we might have to return to the draft" because other soldiers would refuse to serve. Perkins noted that he had showered together with 80 other men during his own time in the military, and he'd feel threatened by a gay man showering there with him.

Welcome to Martha Nussbaum's politics of disgust: an America in which national policy can be discussed at the level of Beavis and Butthead, chasing each other around in circles with a stick that once touched poop.

For 19 years, Renee Harmon says, she and Tammy Davis lived as if they were married.

The two women had joint bank accounts, owned houses and decided to raise children together. Harmon said she even cut the umbilical cords when their daughter and twin boys were born, in 1999 and 2002, after Davis was artificially inseminated.

But in the eyes of Michigan law, Harmon and Davis might as well be strangers.

The Supreme Court is getting involved in the legal fight over the anti-gay protesters who show up at military funerals with inflammatory messages like "Thank God for dead soldiers."

The court agreed Monday to consider whether the protesters' message, no matter how provocative and upsetting, is protected by the First Amendment. Members of a Kansas-based church have picketed military funerals to spread their belief that U.S. deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq are punishment for the nation's tolerance of homosexuality.