THE QUEERS HAVE BEEN BUSY...
May 1st
- Same sex civil unions recognized in Colorado
June 26th
- Supreme Court ruled DOMA, the federal law banning marriage equality, unconstitutional.
June 26th
- Supreme Court ruled Prop 8 case inadmissible and defers to the 9th Circuit Court which found the California law banning marriage equality to be unconstitutional.
June 29th
- Russian
President (autocrat) Vladimir Putin signs vague federal law banning the
exposure of minors to "gay propaganda”, effectively making gay rights
activism/support/acknowledgement jailable offenses.
- Multiple reports have confirmed numerous LGBT youth throughout Russia have been violently targeted by right wing gangs who document the torture of their victims and post it on the internet but the local police refuse to investigate.
- ALSO: The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled same sex marriages can resume in California in response to Prop 8 ruling by Supreme Court.
July 1st
- Same sex marriages begin in Delaware
July 16th
- Britain’s Federal Legislature ratified marriage equality by signing the Marriage (Same-Sex Couples) Bill into law.
August 1st
- Same sex marriages begin in Rhode Island and Minnesota
August
9th
- Bayard Rustin, gay activist, pacifist, civil rights leader, and 1963 March on Washington organizer, was posthumously conferred the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Barack Obama.
August
18th
- David
Miranda, life-partner of political journalist Glenn Greenwald, was
detained in London en route to Brazil because authorities suspected he
might possess correspondence from American whistle-blower Edward Snowden
containing classified documents.
- Germany passed a law that allows its citizens to leave gender unmarked on their children’s birth certificates.
- Gov. Chris Christie signed legislation banning gay conversion therapy in New Jersey.
August
21st
- Pfc.
Bradley* Manning was sentenced to 35 years in Leavenworth military prison (with
the possibility of parole in seven years) for leaking more than 700,000
classified military files that document American military war-crimes in
Iraq and Afghanistan including U.S. soldiers firing on unarmed civilian
from an Apache helicopter.
- Pfc.
Manning confirmed in a public statement that she is a transgender woman
and asked that journalists refer to her as Chelsea.
*Any
reference to Chelsea Manning as Bradley is meant to reflect the official
court-martial reports which were issued prior to Chelsea’s coming out.
August 26th
- Albuquerque, New Mexico judge Alan Malott sent out a court order stating that “implying conditions of sexual orientation on one’s right to enter civil contracts such as marriage” was a violation of the equal-protection clause in the state’s constitution.
- So far 6 counties in New Mexico perform same sex marriages. New Mexico is the only state in the Union with a constitution that neither specifically allows or disallows same sex marriage.
- The IRS announced that it will allow same sex married couples to file joint federal tax returns in accordance with the Supreme Court decision on DOMA in June.
