Like countless supporters of marriage equality across the country, I am disturbed and saddened by Maine voters' approval of a referendum overturning the state's same-sex marriage law. It is particularly difficult to watch people (like those in the photos below) celebrating the denial of basic civil rights to their fellow...

Almost twenty years ago, conservative activists convinced a majority of Colorado voters to approve a state constitutional amendment that prohibited the enactment of laws protecting lesbians and gay men from discrimination. The campaign in favor of the amendment was based on misinformation and outright lies. Amendment supporters, for example, argued...

Today, my oldest son turns eight. Also today, the ACLU is back in court in Florida challenging the constitutionality of that state's thirty-year old law which prohibits lesbians and gay men from adopting. If I lived in Florida, I would not have been permitted to adopt my son because I...

Thurgood Marshall had an easier time of it. Back in the 1940s and 1950s, Marshall and other lawyers at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund kept a tight rein on litigation aimed at dismantling racial segregation.

As a ruling by a federal judge in San Francisco yesterday showed, it is much...

It may surprise some to learn that the debate over same-sex marriage is not only between gay rights supporters and their opponents. For the last fifteen years, there has also been a vigorous debate over same-sex marriage within the LGBT and progressive communities.

For almost two decades, the organized...

They say that the enemies of your enemies are your friends, but in this case that aphorism is not true.

This is the story of how Liberty Counsel, a right-wing legal organization closely associated with Liberty University (founded by the late Rev. Jerry Falwell), has recently been in...

There has been much attention paid as of late to the Obama Administration's failure to push for the repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act. In the meantime, however, there are constitutional challenges being filed against DOMA that have a decent chance of succeeding, And even if they do not...

OK, so you voted for Obama, and you are a big LGBT rights supporter, and you are starting to despair because he has yet to push for the repeal of either DOMA or the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy. And to make matters worse, you've heard that his Department of...