Hillary Clinton’s soaring speech on international LGBT issues was game changing. An historic address of this magnitude was desperately needed to counter the rising tide of backwards and barbaric nations that had recently been persecuting LGBT people to distract from their glaring problems.

“Today, I want to talk about the work we have left to do to protect one group of people who’s human rights are still denied in too many parts of the world today,” Clinton said. “In many ways, they are an invisible minority. They are arrested, beaten, terrorized, even executed...

SAN ANTONIO, Texas -- The termination of a Macy's employee who refused to uphold company policy in regards to LGBTQ rights has so-called family value christian groups angered.

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama on Tuesday directed that the federal government and all agencies engaged abroad to ensure that U.S. diplomacy and foreign assistance promote and protect the human rights of LGBT persons globally.

BOSTON -- Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick on Wednesday signed an historic transgender rights bill, giving the state's estimated 33,000 transgender citizens vital protections against discrimination in employment, housing, education, credit and hate crimes law.

BOSTON -- The Transgender Equal Rights Bill -- which had passed the Massachusetts House on Tuesday night with a 95-58 vote -- cleared the state’s Senate on Wednesday with Senators approving the measure on a voice vote with no opposition.

BOSTON -- In a late night session Tuesday, the Massachusetts House of Representatives passed the Transgender Equal Rights bill without amendment. The approved version added “gender identity” to employment, education, housing, and credit non-discrimination law, as well as to hate crimes law.

Two regions of Russia – Arkhangelsk and Ryazan – have passed laws banning what they call gay "propoganda" -- laws that have been deemed constitutional by Russian courts despite the chilling of free speech and the attack on LGBT organizing, and ability to protest that they represent. Now the St. Petersburg region wants to introduce a similar law.

STRASBOURG, France -- The European Parliament has formally called on countries in the European Union to find an agreement on the draft legislation -- proposed more than three years ago -- to outlaw discrimination based on sexual orientation across the EU.

Let “freedom to live, love and be happy” be more than just a slogan in the passing of our times. Let it not be our epitaph, but our non-violent resistance to freedom being denied to us all.

“It had such an impact because the loss was about death and relationships,” said Jennifer Pizer, senior counsel for Lambda Legal, in a 2006 interview at the time of the 5th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. “The grief and loss was the same between heterosexual and same-sex couples, and a perception of this seemed to come through to much of the public."

Today, as happens quite frequently in the South, I was confronted with another stark reality of the inequality that I face as a married gay man. Inequality, in this sense, to how my marriage is treated compared to a married heterosexual couple.

Rick Santorum, the GOP presidential contender who claims to have gay friends who don’t deserve rights because marriage equality is destroying the American family, now claims that the gay and lesbian community has declared a “jihad” against him.

Hard to believe, but GOP presidential hopeful Rick Santorum has gay friends. This is the same Rick Santorum who opposes gay marriage, opposes civil unions, wants to reinstate “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” and who says gays and lesbians deserve no “privileges.”

Michele Bachmann, fresh from a victory in the Ames, Iowa Straw Poll on Saturday, appeared on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday morning, and was again dogged with questions about her anti-gay platform, this time declaring, “I don’t judge gays.”