Speed Read: Thursday 3 October 2013

 

1-    LAMBDA TAKES ON WEST VIRGINA: Lambda Legal on Tuesday (Oct. 1) filed a lawsuit in federal district court in West Virginia on behalf of three couples challenging a statute that bans marriage licenses for same-sex couples. McGee v. Cole asserts the ban violates the citizens’ U.S. Constitutional rights to liberty and equal protection. Lambda Legal Director Jon Davidson estimates there are now 35 lawsuits challenging bans in 19 of the 36 states with bans on same-sex marriage.

2-   SCALIA QUIET ON SAME-SEX MARRIAGE: Speaking to a university audience in Massachusetts Tuesday, Justice Antonin Scalia passed on a question about same-sex marriage. According to an Associated Press report, he said he wouldn’t get “anywhere near” the topic. Scalia was at Tufts University outside Boston. But just one week earlier, he tackled questions about the topic in a speech in McLean, Va. There, he said justices were overstepping their roles by deciding matters involving marriage for same-sex couples.

3-   63 % LGBT YOUTH SAY THEY NEED TO MOVE: Cindi Lauper’s True Colors Project and other organizations are hosting a “State of Out Youth” town hall Tuesday, October 8, at 7 p.m. in New York City to talk about the “most pressing issues” facing LGBT youth today. But you don’t have to be in New York to take advantage of forum. Register for live webcast.

4-   FOX NEWS CATCHES CUCINNELLI: Conservative news organization Fox News didn’t let Virginia’s Republican gubernatorial candidate Ken Cucinnelli re-write history last week. During a debate with his Democratic opponent Terry McAuliffe, Cuccinelli called “offensively false” McAuliffe’s claim that Cucinnelli referred to gays as “soulless and self-destructive.” But in its report, Fox News set the record straight, quoting Cucinelli at a 2008 Family Foundation event as saying, “When you look at the homosexual agenda, I cannot support something that I believe brings nothing but self-destruction, not only physically but of their soul.”

5-   BIDEN TO KEYNOTE HRC DINNER: Vice President Joe Biden will deliver the centerpiece keynote October 5 at the Human Rights Campaign’s annual national event. Too late to get tickets to the event, which will also honor the legal teams that won the two major cases at the Supreme Court this year. HRC’s website now indicates the event is sold out.

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