WASHINGTON – Eleven state Democratic Party chairs from across the country have joined in support of a marriage equality plank in the party’s national platform.

WILMINGTON, Ohio — When an area school district dismissed a Wilmington College transgender senior in January on the second day of a student-teaching placement at Hillsboro High School, the district may have broken federal law.

Since the end of Apartheid and the inception of South Africa’s new constitution some twenty years ago, the country has been lauded for its lead on the entrenchment of anti-discrimination rights that renders it one of the few in the world to protect sexual orientation and gender identity in its Constitution. Gays and lesbians (LGBTI) enjoy full equality in South Africa. Notwithstanding this South Africa has never managed to escape the brutality of rampant homophobia which is underscored by the high incidence of so called “corrective” rape in its townships, the deployment of an anti-gay ambassador to homophobic Uganda, and its failure to lead the decriminalization of homosexuality in the rest of Africa.

In a shocking about-face, a Republican controlled House Judiciary Committee has approved a bill to establish civil unions in Colorado.

The last time I checked, I never signed up for the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. I don’t even like his church, yet he thinks I should be forced against my will to live by its rules. Do we now make our civil laws based upon Christian Sharia? Do we all have to follow his version of the Bible or be punished by government? And if this is the case, are we really a free country? Are we really much different than Iran, or is it only by a matter of degrees or a matter of time until these so-called “Christian Supremacists” get their filthy and corrupt paws on all of our laws?

LENOIR CITY, Tenn. — A feature that appeared in the Lenoir City High School yearbook entitled “It’s OK to be Gay,” is not okay with at least one school board member, who has called for a criminal investigation of the yearbook’s faculty adviser.

MSNBC commentator Lawrence O’Donnell on Wednesday blasted North Carolina preacher Sean Harris, calling him a “hate-driven pastor” for advocating violence as a corrective measure to prevent that child from being gay or lesbian, and a “liar” for denying much of what he said in an unapologetic retraction.

The proposal to name a U.S. Navy vessel after Harvey Milk is drawing mixed reactions in San Francisco, where the slain gay rights leader served as a city supervisor.

MERCED, Calif — Ricardo Olguin is suing the Merced, Calif., County Sheriff’s Department for sexual harassment, claiming he was fired in 2011 because he is gay.

Famed televangelist Rev. Billy Graham on Wednesday urged North Carolina voters to support an amendment to the state constitution banning same-sex marriage,

MINNEAPOLIS, Minn. — A transgender woman has pleaded guilty to second-degree manslaughter in the killing of a man who witnesses claimed incited the attack using racist and transphobic slurs.

INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. — An Indiana gay teen on Wednesday faced a private school district review board, an effort to expel him after he discharged a stun gun on school property to discourage an attack by school bullies.

The group “One Million Moms” — and its 46,000 members — is once again taking aim at retailer JC Penney, this time for featuring a lesbian couple in its Spring catalog.

Yesterday on Faith and Freedom, Liberty Counsel’s Matt Barber railed against—what else?—LGBT equality, warning of a “tyranny of sexually deviant rights” that will overthrow the Constitution. Barber, who previously said that the push for equal rights is part of an attempt “to impose a globalist, communist structure” and put conservatives “behind bars,” asserted that the “LGBT agenda and Constitutional rights cannot exist in harmony.”

JEFFRSON CITY, Mo. — Missouri Republican state lawmaker, Zachary Wyatt on Wednesday publicly came out to his colleagues during a press conference asking for the withdrawal of Missouri’s “Don’t Say Gay Bill.”

North Carolina preacher Sean Harris, the Senior Pastor of Berean Baptist Church in Fayetteville, N.C., who is heard in an audio clip telling his congregation that, should their children show any signs of “homosexual” behavior, it is their responsibility to use violence as a corrective measure to prevent that child from being gay or lesbian, now say he was misquoted and just joking.

LINCOLN, Neb. — City council member Carl Eskridge on Monday introduced the Lincoln, Neb., “Fairness Ordinance,” a measure that would add sexual orientation and gender identity to the city’s non-discrimination law.

WASHINGTON — Richard Grenell, the openly gay spokesman who was hired two weeks ago by Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign to run the candidate’s foreign policy messages, has resigned in the wake of relentless critiques, most of which was personal, by anti-gay right wing conservatives.

It’s okay to “beat the gay” out of children, says North Carolina Baptist preacher Sean Harris, who advised his congregation that should their children show any signs of “homosexual” behavior, then it is their responsibility to use violence as a corrective measure to prevent that child from being gay or lesbian.

The D.C. City Council voted unanimously on Tuesday to approve an anti-bullying bill on first reading, with Council members expected to approve the measure in a final vote at their next session later this month.