News

ST. PAUL, Minn. — Lawmakers formally launched a long-anticipated effort Wednesday to legalize gay marriage in Minnesota by summer, and gay couples and their small children crowded the kickoff news conference – an image meant to show family diversity already exists in the state.

WASHINGTON — Congress appeared on a course to renew the expired Violence Against Women Act after House Republican leaders on Tuesday agreed to take up a version of the 1994 anti-domestic violence law that passed the Senate two weeks ago by a wide, bipartisan margin.

WASHINGTON — Prominent Republicans, retired military leaders and U.S. businesses are among the factions ready to ask the Supreme Court to support marriage equality in two cases up for argument next month.

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — The Illinois state House committee has approved a bill that would legalize same-sex marriage, sending the measure to the full House for a vote.

PHOENIX — The Phoenix City Council on Tuesday evening approved a measure to expand the city’s anti-discrimination law to include protections for gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender people in city contracts, housing, employment and public accommodations such as restaurants.

More than 60 U.S. corporations — including Apple, eBay, Facebook, Intel, Nike and Morgan Stanley — have signed on to an amicus brief in the landmark U.S. Supreme Court challenge to Proposition 8, California’s voter approved ban on same-sex marriage.

The U.S. Senate has voted to confirm Chuck Hagel to be the nation’s next defense secretary. The vote Tuesday was 58-41, with four Republicans joining Democrats in backing President Barack Obama’s nominee.

DES MOINES, Iowa — A Republican state senator has introduced legislation that would begin the process of referring a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage to Iowa voters.

Edith Windsor, the New York widow who was forced to pay $363,000 in estate taxes in 2009 upon the death of her spouse, Thea Spyer, made her case to the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday, filing a brief in her challenge to the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).

WOLCOTT, Conn. — Officials in a Connecticut school district have backed down in a fight over free speech rights, allowing a student to wear a T-shirt bearing an anti-gay message.