In April, Johnson (pictured) offered to be a surrogate for the Salt Lake County couple, her close friends, after they expressed frustration with the difficulty of adopting a child in Utah, reports the Salt Lake Tribune.

State law forbids cohabiting, unmarried couples from adopting. But some gay couples venture to other states or try to adopt in Utah as single parents.

Johnson became pregnant in September — on the first attempt — with one of the men’s sperm. He will have the same rights to the child as any biological father. But his partner, under Utah law, cannot be an adoptive parent.

Johnson offered to be a surrogate at no cost to save the couple the prohibitive price of hiring one — as much as $100,000. (The men are picking up the medical tab.) She also is excited to help a couple who might not otherwise have been able to have a child.

U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Stephen Reinhardt deemed the denial of healthcare and other benefits to the spouse of federal public defender Brad Levenson to be a violation of the Constitution’s guarantee of due process and discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, which is prohibited by California state law.

Levenson married his longtime partner, Tony Sears, on July 12, 2008, during the five-month period when same-sex marriage was legal in California. A ballot measure, Proposition 8, was passed a year ago defining marriage as between one man and one woman.

Reinhardt issued the ruling after the Office of Personnel Management overrode his earlier finding that denying health coverage to Levenson’s husband violated both the U.S. Constitution and the court’s own anti-discrimination rules. The office cited the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act in making the spouses of gay federal workers ineligible as dependents.

Reinhardt’s order applies only to Levenson.

Photo credit: Levenson and Sears, in a March 2009 The New York Times photo.
Full story at the Los Angeles Times.

Apparently, one of the gay fathers went to check out groceries while the other went back to get some Bic lighters, who then separately used the self-checkout aisle to purchase the lighters.

In August 16 incident, they were both detained by Wal-Mart employees, who they said were rude and threatening and demanded they proceed to an isolated area.

When they refused and asked for police to be called, the responding officers were not friendly to the couple either, they say.

After 45 minutes of being separated from their children and each other, one put in handcuffs, no less, they were told that store videotapes showed they had done nothing wrong.

But instead of an apology, the store’s staff read a statement that said they were ”being uncooperative,” and that they were banned for life from all Wal-Mart stores.

The couple has since received a letter from Wal-Mart still demanding that they pay 10 times the value of the lighters, items that were never shoplifted in to begin with.

Full story, South Bend Tribune.

The airline says Gilbert Caldwell’s husband is his “travel companion,” entitled to fly at a discount but not for free, Caldwell said. “I am asking SkyWest to give me the same benefits that they give my married heterosexual co-workers.”

The case is one of the first discrimination complaints to surface by any of the 18,000 same-sex couples who married in California before the November 2008 passage of Proposition 8, which amended the state Constitution to define marriage as the union of a man and a woman.

Caldwell, 56, who has worked for SkyWest in Palm Springs since September 2004, married David Farrell, 72, his partner of 34 years, in June 2008. They had been registered domestic partners since 2002.

A SkyWest spokeswoman did not return phone messages about the case.

State law entitles same-sex spouses and domestic partners to be treated the same as heterosexual married couples in employment, housing, insurance and commerce.

SkyWest flies as a regional partner, mostly under the Delta Airlines banner in the Western U.S.

Full Story, SFGate.com.

During a concert earlier this month at the Pearl at the Palms in Las Vegas, Mariah Carey revealed that she is more than just okay with gay marriage.

She also wants to celebrate it.

Video captured of the moment that everyone is talking about reveals Carey openly embracing a gay couple on stage for the world to see.

With a champagne toast and a round of hugs and kisses for the gay couple honored, Carey joined the ranks of major entertainment stars leading the charge to celebrate gay and lesbian love wherever it is found.