gay-rights

Top Republican Switches Sides on Gay Marriage After Son Comes Out

Max Read · 03/15/13 06:47AM

Senator Rob Portman, an Ohio Republican and a top contender for the party's vice-presidential candidacy last year, has come out in support of gay marriage—after his son, Will, came out as gay. "As a congressman, and more recently as a senator, I opposed marriage for same-sex couples," Portman writes in an editorial published today in the Columbus Dispatch. "Then something happened that led me to think through my position in a much deeper way." In 2011 Will, then in his first year at Yale, told his parents that he is gay. That knowledge, Portman writes, "prompted me to consider the issue from another perspective."

Puerto Rico Supreme Court Upholds Ban Preventing Gay Couples from Adopting

Maggie Lange · 02/20/13 04:50PM

With a narrow 5-4 vote, Puerto Rico's Supreme Court continues to ban gay couples from adopting children. The vote weighed in on an individual case, involving an unnamed woman who attempted to adopt the child of her partner. Her partner had had in-vitro fertilization to conceive the child.

Ex-American Idol Winner Fantasia Isn't Cool With Gays Unless They're Her Fans

Jordan Sargent · 01/01/13 11:37PM

You may remember American Idol season three winner Fantasia Barrino from winning the third season of American Idol. What you may not know is that Fantasia isn't really cool with gay marriage — and she took to Instagram to let everyone know while also working out her own persecution complex. The image has been deleted, but here's the text:

Education Secretary Arne Duncan Comes Out in Support of Gay Marriage

Max Read · 05/07/12 10:13AM

U.S. Secretary of Education and Chief Presidential Basketball Guy Arne Duncan endorsed marriage equality on Monday morning, telling Mark Halperin on Morning Joe that "yes," he believes gay men and women should be allowed to marry. (Not each other: you know what I mean, though.)

Chicken or the Gays: Make a Choice About Eating Chick-fil-A

cord jefferson · 04/19/12 02:45PM

If they gave a Pulitzer Prize for waffling, this piece from the Washington City Paper last week might have won it. In it, food editor Chris Shott spends several hundred words pondering whether a person who is not a homophobe can in good conscience eat at Chick-fil-A, the Atlanta-based fast-food chain and purveyor of those dumbass cow ads. Chick-fil-A's nonprofit arm, the WinShape Foundation, has for years donated millions to anti-gay Christian groups like Focus on the Family, which once warned Americans, "[T]he homosexual agenda is a beast."

The Most Heroic Gawker Characters of 2011

Maureen O'Connor · 12/27/11 11:32AM

We loathe a lot of people here at Gawker, mostly because we recognize that humanity is irreversibly doomed and the future holds nothing but Kim Kardashian dancing in six-inch stilettos on the graves of the poor. (Silver lining: Well-aerated grave grass.)

Mitt Romney's Chat with a Gay Veteran About as Awkward as It Sounds

Jim Newell · 12/12/11 01:57PM

Oh Christ, someone on Team Romney is going to get fired today: Poor old Mittens was forced to talk to a human, one-on-one, with cameras rolling. And not just any human, but a gay one. Who was a veteran. In Vietnam. Which was a war. And so on. Yikes.

The U.S. Needs More Ads Like This

Max Read · 11/26/11 03:35PM

Here's a sweet Australian ad for—well, I don't want to ruin the surprise (you will probably be able to guess what's going to happen anyway), except to say that the United States could stand to see more campaigns like this.

Is This the First Openly Gay Campaign Ad to Feature the Candidate's Kid?

TPM · 10/03/11 09:05PM

A lot is changing on the gay rights landscape. The military - once a home for staunch homophobia - is now one of the more welcoming employers for openly gay people. Where the last Democratic president sat down and signed the Defense Of Marriage Act into law, the current Democratic president is on a mission to tear it down.

Jay Leno Grills Michele Bachmann on Gay Rights

Matt Cherette · 09/17/11 05:37AM

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.

Bachmann Dodges Questions About Gay Rights

Max Read · 08/14/11 10:30AM

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."

New York Clerk Resigns Over Gay Marriage

Max Read · 07/12/11 09:44PM

Laura Fotusky, clerk of rural Barker, N.Y., quit her post on Tuesday rather than grant marriage licenses to gay folks. She would probably had more fun staying and being really judge-y with the marrying gays, but, well, God hates gay marriage! (She's posted her resignation letter here, if you really care.) Gay couples in the region are better off driving the hour to Niagra Falls anyway and going the whole nine yards with the honeymoon suite and everything. In any event—Laura—really—we mean this—don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out. [Politico; image, not of Barker, and not of Fotusky, via Shutterstock]