Gay rights

This morning in a London court, a jury handed down a verdict. The actor Kevin Spacey stood accused of nine counts of sexual assault, which had sparked up in the aftermath of #MeToo; six years later, the jury acquitted him of all of them. Though he had remained stoic during the trial, he cried as the final “not guilty” was read aloud. The two-time Oscar winner, star of House of Cards and American Beauty, former artistic director of the famous Old Vic theater and reluctantly outed gay man was free. He turned sixty-four years old today.   To some, this is a massive miscarriage of justice.

The Supreme Court is entering the home stretch of its session, with just days left before it goes into recess for the summer. Some of the most significant decisions have yet to be issued, teeing up a big week. Here is what some of those cases are. Moore v. Harper This case tackles whether a state’s supreme court can rule on gerrymandering cases. The plaintiffs are testing the independent state legislature theory, which argues that state legislatures have the prerogative in redistricting, and that state supreme courts cannot get involved in the process. North Carolina’s supreme court has since switched its original decision against the state legislature, meaning that the US Supreme Court might drop the case instead of issuing a decision. Students for Fair Admissions v.

Cockburn was pleased to see Joe Biden, the noted civil rights activist and former eighteen-wheeler driver who made it from the barrios of Wilmington to the White House, has finally opened up about his "epiphany" on same-sex marriage. It is a brave thing to do in 2023, but political consequences be damned! Biden was going to set the record straight, and explain to the American people that he has long been a fervent believer in the advancing the cause of gay rights. In an interview on The Daily Show with former Obama staffer and Harold and Kumar star Kal Penn, Biden explained that he could "remember exactly where [his] epiphany was" on the question of marriage equality. He was a high-school senior, he explained.

A friend makes maps, colorful graphic maps of mostly Washington, DC neighborhoods. She sells them, often framed, by the bushel at farmer's markets and through her own shop. She often asks people where they live, but never how they live. Her service — the map — is neutral regarding whom one is married to, what religion they practice, which political party they support. Everyone is welcome to buy a map, and all the maps are the same. Not so for the hypothetical wedding cake maker in the next stall. While anyone is free (indeed, allowed by law) to buy an off-the-rack cake, she refuses to use her form of speech to support LGBTQ weddings. She'll sell a gay couple a cake reading "Have a Great Day" but will not create a rainbow design with two women holding hands.

In a speech to August’s CPAC gathering in Dallas, Hungarian president Viktor Orbán said a good many admirable things about the importance of liberty and the tyranny of the globalist left, and the audience was gratifyingly receptive. But the biggest cheers and the most prolonged applause came in response to Orbán’s citation of a line from the Hungarian constitution: “Hungary shall protect the institution of marriage as the union of one man and one woman.” Not so long ago, that enthusiasm might have raised eyebrows. To be sure, the 2015 Obergefell v.

I just went for a stroll down Main Street here in our little blue-collar New Hampshire town, and noticed the telephone polls festooned with Pride flags.  This was odd enough, given that our town had never observed Pride Month (known as June on the Gregorian calendar) before. What was really shocking, though, is that the town is flying the plain old rainbow flags, not the new “Progress Pride” flags. Ours don’t have the new chevron honoring America’s two most hallowed minorities: trans people (white, pink and blue) and people of color (brown and black). Activists claim that the chevron specifically represents trans people of color. Maybe that’s true. What’s infinitely more likely, though, is that gays and lesbians have been passé since Obergefell v.

Campaigners for LGBT+ rights have recently been most occupied with proposals to ban gay conversion therapy and the rights and wrongs of such a move. But could another battle soon be underway on an appropriately military subject? The Armed Forces had a ban on homosexuality until 2000 when the Blair government lifted it following a ruling in the European Courts of Human Rights. Veterans dismissed or forced to resign for their sexual orientation or gender identity before this date often suffered loss of ranks or pension. Some were given criminal convictions or placed on the Sex Offenders register, affecting them to this day.