Joe.My.God. LGBT News

From their cover story: As the Olympic Winter Games headed to Sochi in 2014, so did a spotlight on the violations against the Russian LGBT community. Those violations are coming directly from the top of the Russian government, with President Vladimir Putin leading the charge. His crusade against LGBT Russians and the outrage and protests his actions sparked have earned …

Montana Attorney General Tim Fox is continuing to defend his state’s ban on same-sex marriage with a response brief that compares gay nuptials to incest and polygamy. The brief also makes the usual blah-blah procreation argument, but primarily focuses on the level of scrutiny issue. Dig into the full brief at Equality Case Files.

Lyle Denniston writes at SCOTUSblog: The challengers in the cases in the four states of the Sixth Circuit now have two legal options: First, they can ask the full Sixth Circuit bench (the en banc court) to reconsider their cases. If it does so, the panel decision released Thursday would be wiped out and the en banc court would start …

Three Malaysian transgender women have won a landmark civil rights case. Via Agence France-Presse: A three-judge appeals court panel ruled that a state provision that bars Muslim men from dressing as women was unconstitutional, saying it “deprives the appellants of the right to live with dignity”. “It has the effect of denying the appellants and other sufferers of GID (gender …

Ethereal and lovely.

Via the Washington Post: Latvian Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkevics announced Thursday that he was gay, breaking a barrier in Eastern Europe’s socially conservative political arena. The declaration, made via a cheerful Twitter posting, immediately gave gay rights advocates a prominent voice in post-Soviet Eastern Europe. The region — where openly gay public figures are a rarity — has significantly lagged …

Via NBC San Diego: An updated tally puts U.S. Rep. Scott Peters ahead of challenger Carl DeMaio by 861 votes in the tight race for the 52nd Congressional District. A final, certified winner will not be announced until Monday. After Election Night Tuesday, candidate Carl DeMaio led by fewer than a 1,000 votes, but both said they were optimistic about …

Map legend.

Via White House press release: Five years ago, I was proud to sign the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crime Prevention Act into law – a law that strengthened the protections against crimes based on the color of our skin, the love in our hearts, the faith we practice, or the place of our birth. This law gave …

“We have been awaiting this decision for some time and welcome it not only as a tremendous victory, but as a common sense recognition that it is not for the federal courts to substitute their judgment about whether same-sex ‘marriage’ is a good idea or not, but to leave it to the people to make the decision about this fundamental …