The predominantly Catholic island nation of Malta, which only legalized divorce six years ago and where abortion remains completely outlawed, is on the cusp of sanctioning same-sex marriage. At the urging of Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, who won his second-straight term in a snap election last month, the Marriage Equality Bill is the first law being debated by the country’s new parliament, which convened for its first sitting on Monday.

There was a time when Erica Kasper thought justice might be near for her transgender son, Drew Adams. After his high school refused to let him use the bathroom that aligns with his gender identity, the Department of Education started investigating the Florida school for discrimination, she says. For months, investigators spoke with the family and school administrators. Then everything came to a screeching halt.

On Friday, the Texas Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision, refused to dismiss a case brought by two Houston taxpayers who believe the city shouldn’t provide employee benefits for the same-sex spouses of city employees. As New York Law School professor Arthur S. Leonard, who called it a “clear misreading” of the U.S.

Support for marriage equality is rising among all Americans, according to two new national surveys.And despite efforts to hinder it, this sea change is also touching an important demographic within the evangelical Christian community: young people. Young white evangelicals are increasingly showing support for same-sex marriage, according to recent surveys conducted by the Pew Research Center and PRRI.

With a broadening of the reality competition’s audience and a new prime Friday night time slot, more eyes than ever are on “Drag Race” ― the most visibly queer program on television ― and it’s now challenging notions of gender and sexuality in more of America’s living rooms than ever before.

It brought out some Gorsuch defenders, including some of his students (at the University of Colorado, Boulder, where Gorsuch taught) and friends of Gorsuch, who responded to me on Twitter and elsewhere, some angrily, accusing me of portraying Gorsuch, wrongly, as a homophobe. In fact, I did nothing of the kind, even pointing to the fact that Gorsuch had a former clerk to whom hereportedly offered support upon the former clerk’s same-sex marriage in 2014.

Dykes On Bikes, a nonprofit lesbian motorcycle organization that has had trademark troubles of its own, is celebrating after band The Slantswon its case on Monday. The Patent and Trademark Office had previously struck down the band’s request to trademark its name, citing a policy that had prohibited the trademarking of “disparaging” names. “Kids would pull their eyes back in a slant-eyed gesture to make fun of us,” frontman Simon Tam told NPR in January.

A three-judge panel of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals this week lifted a lower court injunction that had stopped the implementation of what many legal observers and LGBTQ activists view as the worst, most dangerous legislative attack on LGBTQ people yet. Mississippi’s HB 1523, the “Protecting Freedom of Conscience from Government Discrimination Act,” signed into law by Gov.

Last week, the governor of Texas signed into law a bill that allows faith-based adoption groups to deny services “under circumstances that conflict with the provider’s sincerely held religious beliefs.” Critics, including the ACLU of Texas, say the new law could likely be used to discriminate against LGBTQ families in adoptions. A number of Christian groups and outlets applauded the bill.

Several GOP members of Congress who were targeted in a horrific act of gun violenceat a baseball practice in Alexandria, Virginia last week agree that if not for the Capitol Police, who stopped the gunman (who later died from gunshot wounds), many among them and their aides might be dead. Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La), the House Majority Whip, was critically wounded and, thankfully, his condition has been upgraded from critical to serious, as he continues to recover.