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Paul E. Singer, one of the most generous Republican donors in the country.

Their behind-the-scenes financial support — about $1 million in donations, delivered in recent weeks to a new coalition of gay rights organizations — could alter the political calculus of Albany lawmakers, especially the Republican state senators in whose hands the fate of gay marriage rests.

The donors represent some of New York’s wealthiest and most politically active figures and include Paul E. Singer, a hedge fund manager and top-tier Republican donor, as well as two other financiers, Steven A. Cohen and Clifford S. Asness.

At the same time, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, a billionaire businessman and philanthropist who…

To say that Chip Arndt is excited about his new project, CouplesforEquality.org (C4E) is an understatement. Just get him started. Passionate about it, he will not stop talking about C4E until there is no oxygen left with which to build his next breath. C4E, a digital library of radiant photos and stories of couples—gay and straight—celebrating their love and championing equality, is his baby.

In short, it would not be inaccurate to describe this baby as a reflection of the wonderful love and life to be had after a person learns the “itgetsbetter.org” message of Dan Savage.

Arndt has been a Miami resident for six years and an accomplished LGBT activist locally and nationally since his 2003 win on television’s The Amazing Race 4 made him famous and gave him a strong platform for living. While other men might have used that platform and the blessing of exceptionally good looks to model underwear, Arndt, a product of both Yale and Harvard, aimed higher. Even an abbreviated list of past and present involvements is lengthy and includes The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, Care Resource, Dining Out For Life, Gay American Heroes Foundation, AIDS Walk Miami, GLAAD, Lambda Legal, Human Rights Campaign, 2008 Electoral College and The Hetrick-Martin Institute.

Arndt is a business consultant by profession, and in describing the newly launched C4E, he emphasized its careful positioning.

“I’m an entrepreneur who likes to start a business on the back of a napkin. All the same, I do support existing LGBT programs. For me, C4E is like building a different mousetrap, not necessarily a better mousetrap. We took a long time to set this up before launching it on April 16th. Our site will work in partnership with all other LGBT advocacy groups. C4E is additive, not competitive. We’ve come up with a wonderfully simplistic tag line ‘Love Above All’ and the goal is to create water cooler chat among people who might not be part of the LGBT conversation. If a straight person says to a friend ‘You should check out the photo I posted on C4E’, we get one step closer to equality because, as everyone knows, a picture is worth a thousand words.”

Arndt is pleasantly surprised by C4E’s instantaneous growth. He had thought that he would have to “seed” interest in the site by asking coupled friends to post photos. Instead, he reports the opposite.

Click here to read the full story @ South Florida Gay News

For people in same-sex relationships, aging carries an added burden of anxiety: the fear that in a health crisis their partner might be excluded from making medical decisions, even visiting their bedside.

Consider Tim Hare, 62, a retired architect in Easton, Pa., with a history of heart problems. He and his partner of 34 years, Earl Ball, were legally married in Canada in 2003. But whether hospitals and health care authorities in this country would recognize them as family members is an open question, even with President Obama’s order last week extending hospital visiting rights and decision-making authority to same-sex partners.

“This is a real fear everywhere I go,” Mr. Hare said. “I have been to a lot of specialists lately, and I look and think, ‘Wait till they hear the “husband” word.’

Advocates and experts say that Mr. Obama’s memorandum to Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services, is just a first step — that its success will depend on…

Click here to read the full story @ The New York Times

Americans nationwide are evenly divided over the issue of same sex marriage. But Republicans in Mississippi are divided over a wholly different wedlock issue: interracial marriage. In a PPP poll released Thursday, a 46% plurality of registered Republican voters said they thought interracial marriage was not just wrong, but that it should be illegal. 40% said interracial marriage should be legal.

Gov. Haley Barbour, with a home state advantage in Mississippi, also topped PPP's survey of the GOP primary field at 37%, followed by Mike Huckabee at 19%, and Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich at 10%. The poll also found that voters who thought interracial marriage should be banned liked…Click here to read the full story @ TalkingPointsMemo.com

“The Legacy Couples photo shoot at Miami Beach Pride was a great success because we both highlighted diverse, long-term, committed relationships and brought these relationships into the light to educate thousands and thousands of people about celebrating relationships in all their diversity,” said Luis Iga, cofounder of Couples for Equality™.

Fellow cofounder Niko Nikolaou added: “We owe a huge thank you to Dale Stine of Miami Beach and Marlo Courtney, of the Ocean Drive Business Association and Managing Director of the Goldman Properties, which owns the Park Central Hotel where we had the photo shoot.  The Founders are proud to be working with so many wonderful people across the USA, and eventually the world, on this inclusive project dedicated to ‘Love Above All’ and to bringing this message to people everywhere through similar events as we had at Miami Beach Pride.”

In the past 72 hours since Miami Beach Pride, the Legacy Couples gathering, and C4E hosting a booth during the Festival, we have had additional 50 online submissions from “Couples” all over the world have been added to the Website.

Please join Couples for Equality™ by hosting an event in your city or by submitting a photograph and story of your own relationship online.  And, if we can assist you in spreading the message of "Love Above All.” by sharing anything you see on our website for your own use, please contact us.

We are grateful to have the opportunity to work with organizations as TOWLEROAD.com on a project that speaks to so many in the LGBT community and reaches out to so many other couples who are discriminated against on a daily basis because of their multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, same-sex, interfaith, and /or interracial make up. It is time we all stand together in support of each other's loving and committed relationships to overcome everyday biases and overt discrimination on so many levels in so many societies.

Click here to read our mention on Towleroad.com

One subset of the gay community -- legally married bi-national same-sex couples -- must be feeling particularly whiplashed of late. One day, they are set to be ripped apart or forced into exile in Canada. Then, they get a reprieve from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) when representatives from the Washington, D.C. and Baltimore districts announce that they will hold in abeyance all deportation proceedings involving gay foreign nationals legally married to gay American citizens.

The organization Immigration Equality then tells us that they have been told that this abeyance is meant to hold until there is a final judicial or legislative decision on the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). Just as suddenly, the USCIS announces that the abeyance....Click here to read the full article on Towleroad.com

DUTCH pair Helene Faasen and Anne-Marie Thus walked down the aisle into the history books 10 years ago as the world's first legally wed lesbian couple, a distinction they now employ in activism. "We married for love, not politics. But of course we were aware it was an historic moment," 41-year-old Anne-Marie, a notary assistant and gay rights campaigner, said ahead of their 10th anniversary on Friday.

By tying the knot in front of the world's press, "we wanted to make other people think about how horrible it is to be denied something that is a natural right for others," added her wife, 44-year-old notary Helene Faasen.

"A heterosexual person never needs to think about whether he is allowed to marry or not, he simply needs to be lucky enough to find the love of his life."

The Netherlands was the first country to legalise same-sex marriage, in 2001. Helene and Anne-Marie, both in traditional, flowing wedding gowns, exchanged the first nuptials alongside three pairs of grooms in Amsterdam on April 1 that year before then mayor Job Cohen.

Since then, nearly 15,000.... Click here to read the full story @ news.com.au