Joe.My.God. LGBT News

The fifth-tallest residential building on the world is on fire in Dubai at this writing. The 80-story building is called the Marina Torch and was completed in 2011. Daytime photos of the building are here. Gulf News reports: People being rescued from the tower with smoke inhalation injuries. A resident said the fire alarm went off at 2.05am. “There have …

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Via the Associated Press: A florist who refused to provide flowers for a gay wedding has rejected an offer from the Washington state attorney general to settle a discrimination case by paying a $2,000 fine and agreeing to sell bouquets for same-sex ceremonies in the future. “Our state would be a better place if we respected each other’s differences, and …

Via the Austin Statesman: Attorney General Ken Paxton on Friday asked the Texas Supreme Court to confirm that the marriage license issued to an Austin same-sex couple a day earlier was void. As the product of a “trial court’s improper order,” Paxton argued, the marriage license was never legally valid. Paxton argued that the Supreme Court’s Thursday stay, which blocked …

Via Politico: Jeb Bush plans to name Tim Miller, executive director of America Rising PAC, as his top communications aide, Republican sources told POLITICO on Friday. Miller initially will be a senior adviser to Bush’s Right to Rise PAC, and is expected to become communications director if Bush launches his campaign. Kristy Campbell, who has been the PAC’s chief spokesperson, …

From the Dallas Morning News: A Plano petition drive aimed at the city’s LGBT ordinance is invalid, the city has announced. Last month, opponents of the city’s Equal Rights Ordinance say they turned in petitions containing more than the 3822 signatures required to force the City Council to repeal the measure or put it on the ballot. Plano officials say …

Barronelle Stutzman is actually many years from being an octogenarian, but that doesn’t work so well in the right’s “little old lady” scenario.

The wind chill this morning was a record-setting -15.

Founded by former NOM chairman Robert George, the Witherspoon Institute today argues that the Supreme Court’s Windsor ruling is just like Dred Scott, the infamous 1857 ruling which held that African-Americans could not be considered citizens. From their site Public Discourse: In legal form and substance, the decisions in Windsor and Dred Scott are surprisingly parallel. Windsor involved a same-sex …