While gay and lesbian Americans are anxiously awaiting a pair of U.S. Supreme Court rulings that could see the biggest advancement of LGBT rights in American history, Russia is taking a decidedly different path.
Russia's lower house of Parliament today passed a law banning gay “propaganda,” which is being called an unnecessary overreach by international gay rights activists. The vote was 436 to 0 with one abstention while some 20 activists were arrested earlier today during protests against the legislation.
According to news outlet Russia Today, the current version of the law “describes the propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations as 'spreading the information in order to form non-traditional sexual desires in children, describing such relations as attractive, promoting the distorted understanding of social equality of traditional and non-traditional relations and also unwanted solicitation of information that could provoke interest to such relations.'”
Several mayors from across the country participated in a conference call today sponsored by the Respect for Marriage Coalition to urge the Supreme Court to strike down DOMA.
Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed, who announced his support for marriage equality in December after struggling with the issue for some time, said today that while his city is progressive and offers domestic partnerships to city workers, Georgia overall is very conservative.
Several members of the Georgia Association for Women Lawyers have resigned and many more signed a letter expressing disappointment after the organization did not take a stand on marriage equality for same-sex couples.
On April 10, four former presidents of GAWL and the current president of the Atlanta Bar Association, as well as 51 other members, signed a letter from its Public Affairs Committee & Feminist Affinity Group to the bar association's leadership stating their dissatisfaction that the bar association chose not to join in an amicus brief to the U.S. Supreme Court against California's Prop. 8, which ended same-sex marriage in the state.
The Marietta Daily Journal published an article on Friday examining the reaction of Cobb residents in the wake of the recent U.S. Supreme Court marriage arguments and the viral Facebook profile picture-swap of red equality symbols that was impossible to miss.
The article, written by Jon Gillooly, profiles several pro-gay rights OTP'ers and closes with an interview with current Georgia Republican Party Chairperson Sue Everhart, who makes a few outlandish statements in defense of “traditional” marriage.