It's been a long, strange road for Ken Mehlman, the George W. Bush campaign strategist and former chairman of the Republican National Committee. Last year he came out of the closet. Now he's been named to the Out 100 and it seems all his work against gay Americans has been forgiven. Oh, we won't forget a gay traitor so quickly.

Despite the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell, the Marine Corps still fails to recognize gay and lesbian marriages as "real" marriages. For Marine Cpl. Ashley Vice and her civilian partner, Jaime Murphy, that meant they would not be eligible for the $1,200-a-month housing allowance made available to straight married Marines.

Last week, we showed you this heartbreaking video from the WE DO Campaign, an effort to draw attention to the battle for marriage equality in North Carolina by having gay couples request—and get denied—marriage licenses from the state.

One reason why some people oppose same-sex marriage is that they've never met a happy, loving gay couple or family. That's what the Campaign for Southern Equality is trying to change with the WE DO Campaign.

The misinformation dissemination league known as the National Organization for Marriage has made three asinine movies from New York town clerks who quit their jobs rather than issue same-sex marriage licenses after the state legislature made them legal this July. Now they're claiming it's "persecution."

You know how Jay Leno's lips are always firmly planted on his guest's behind, no matter who it is? How publicists enamored with Leno's softball predictability are always eager to book their clients on The Tonight Show? And how Leno rarely, if ever, challenges the answers a guest provides to the questions he asks? Well, that changed on Friday night. How so? Two words: Michele Bachmann.

Sure, Dan Savage rebranded Rick Santorum's name to mean a piece of shit, but here is the right-wing candidate for the Republican presidential nomination behaving like one while discussing his stance on gay marriage at Penn State. His argument against gays getting married is painfully easy to debunk, but you have to give credit to someone who can do it to his face.

So a full eight years ago, then-Sen. Rick Santorum made an offensive slippery-slope argument with regards to legalizing gay marriage and how it would lead to constant bestiality everywhere. Some folks on the Internet responded by pulling a Google prank that forever links his name to frothy anal discharge. But this doesn't still bother Santorum, does it? Railing against it isn't, say, a part of his stump presence nowadays?

Seven years ago in Massachusetts, Bradford Wells married his long-time partner, Anthony John Makk. They have now been together for 19 years. Sometime this week — by Thursday at the latest — Anthony John Makk will be forcibly removed from the country. He is Australian, and the government has denied him permanent residency. Which it can do, because the federal government doesn't recognize same-sex marriage.

Jerry Buell, Teacher of the Year at Mount Dora High School north of Orlando, has been suspended pending an investigation into some super-cool comments he made on his Facebook page. The social studies teacher wrote that he "almost threw up" when he heard that same-sex marriage had been legalized in New York. He thinks same-sex marriage is a "cesspool" and a "sin." Rock on, Mister B.! I "like" this! LOL!

On tonight's Daily Show, Jon Stewart had gay marriage on the mind. Stewart started off by mocking Rick Santorum for the lame analogies he turns to whenever he's asked to explain why he's against same-sex marriage. Stewart's focus then shifted to President Obama's apparent flip-flop on the legality of the anti-gay Defense of Marriage Act. "Ah, the best of both worlds!" said Stewart. "The administration won't defend the indefensible—they will, however, enforce the indefensible."

What is Michele Bachmann running for, again? "I'm running for the presidency of the United States," the Iowa straw poll winner helpfully clarified to Meet the Press host David Gregory on Sunday morning. "I'm not running to be anyone's judge." Except for, apparently, gay couples with kids, whom the congresswoman refused to describe as "families." But stop asking Michele Bachmann about that! This isn't "what people are concerned about right now"! Even though it is, according to Michele Bachmann, "the defining political issue of our time."

Likely presidential candidate Rick Perry, governor of Texas, hurt the Christian conservatives' feelings last week when he said about gay marriage in New York, "That's New York, and that's their business, and that's fine with me. That is their call. If you believe in the 10th Amendment, stay out of their business." That was courageous of him! But now it's all over, and he suddenly supports a federal marriage amendment.

Following today's official legalization of same-sex marriage in New York, Mayor Michael Bloomberg opened up Gracie Mansion to serve as both host and officiator of longtime staffers John Feinblatt and Jonathan Mintz's gay wedding. The couple's two daughters shared flower girl responsibilities during the short ceremony, which ended with a double dose of the traditional Jewish glass-breaking ritual. A video of the wedding's highlights is above.

Hundreds of gay and lesbian couples across New York state are getting hitched today, thanks to legislation passed on June 24. In New York City alone, 823 couples signed up to marry today, while couples in a dozen other cities across the state also walked down the aisle.

Saturday Night Live comedian Al Franken is a senator now, for whatever reason, and while it won't ever not be weird to see him being all serious in those big fancy buildings, he makes a better senator than Kevin Nealon would've. Like today, when, during a Senate hearing on the Defense of Marriage Act, he (in the words of Think Progress) "destroy[ed]" a representative of conservative activist group "Focus on the Family"! He didn't literally "destroy" the guy, of course; he just patiently and condescendingly explained to him that he did a stupid thing. Which is the next best thing to actual destruction. [Think Progress]

Vermont's half-blind old warhorse senator Patrick Leahy, known hero, is holding hearings today about the Defense of Marriage Act, and during testimony he got conservative group Focus on the Family's Vice President of Public Policy Tom Minnery to admit that the 1996 law cheats children.

Today we heard that President Obama publicly endorses a bill that would get rid of DOMA. Yay, support from the president! But is it too little, too late? One commenter weighs in.

White House press secretary Jay Carney broke a bit of news in today's briefing: President Obama publicly supports the Respect for Marriage Act, which would repeal all three sections of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act. Not really shocking, since he's been against DOMA since his earliest days on the campaign trail, but this endorsement of the actual repeal bill will help draw attention to the Senate hearing on it that's scheduled for tomorrow.

It's wonderful that New York state passed gay marriage legislation, but now comes the really hard part: gay weddings. Yes, all that pent up wedding planning energy in the gay community is going to come flying out in one concussive burst, and here is the first set of grooms you're going to hate a little bit.