TUPELO, Miss. -- Retail giant J.C. Penney has come under fire from the anti-gay group "One Million Moms" over its recent hiring of hugely popular daytime television talk-show host, Ellen DeGeneres as its spokesperson.

Starbucks, Google, and Alcoa are the latest in a growing list of major corporations to announce their support for marriage equality in Washington state.

More positive polling in Maine and Washington. Gay couples get a green light to sue over civil unions in New Jersey. A vote on DOMA gets postponed until next week. And marriage equality gets a boost from the National Association of Flight Attendants. This week's Marriage News Watch is here...

BOSTON -- Seventy major U.S. companies, including CBS, Google, Microsoft, Nike and Starbucks, have come together in an "amicus" brief -- commonly referred to as a "friend of the court" brief -- claiming that the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) is harmful to commerce.

New IRS 990 forms reveal that fast-food restaurant chain Chick-fil-A donated nearly $2 million to anti-gay groups in 2009, reports Equality Matters.

Bank of America, the nation's largest bank holding company, has announced plans to reimburse gay employees for the additional taxes they pay on same-sex couple healthcare plans.

Steve Jobs, the iconic American CEO and innovative co-founder of Apple -- who many credit with transforming the personal use of technology with products such as the iPod, iPad, iPhone, iTunes, and thee Mac computers -- died Wednesday. He was 56.

Walmart -- the world's biggest retailer and the largest private employer in the U.S. -- has added gender identity and expression to its non-discrimination policy.

Anti-Gay activist Pete LaBarbera, President of the one-man anti-gay operation "Americans For Truth About Homosexuality" (AFTAH), who earned himself a place on the Southern Poverty Law Center's list of hate groups, is incensed that LGBTQ advocacy group AllOut.org is demanding PayPal sever its relationship with what it calls an anti-gay hate group.

The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) on Friday announced the award recipients for the 2011 GLAAD Amplifier Awards, an annual event honoring those that elevate and promote images in advertising that include fair and accurate representations of the LGBT community.

A new daily deals website catering to the LGBT community launched on Tuesday, and offers subscribers with daily offers from local and regional businesses who are known to be gay-friendly.

The sudden resignation on Wednesday of Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs paves the way for the ascension of Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook, who, upon being named Apple’s new CEO, was hailed by many in the LGBT community as possibly the world’s most powerful gay executive.

San Francisco based gay activist and blogger Roy Steele is organizing, and calling for a nationwide boycott of retailer’s enrolled in the Christian Values Network (CVN) shopping web portal, including Sears, Walmart, Sam's Club and Target.

Lambda Legal on Thursday filed a discrimination lawsuit against a Sizzler Restaurant in Forest Hills, Queens, New York, on behalf a woman who was targeted because "she did not conform to the stereotypes of how a woman should look," according to the complaint.

Apple has removed their iTunes store from the “Christan Values Network” (CVN) after more than 22,000 people signed a petition on Change.org asking the technology company to stop allowing the funding of anti-gay organizations such as Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council.