When it comes to an issue as controversial as same-sex marriage can be, adults can have some pretty set opinions. But Sarah Crank, a home-schooled 14-year-old from Bowie, took the chance this week to let a Maryland Senate committee know what she thought about the state's renewed push for marriage equality. more ›

Marylanders may be hoping to get same-sex marriage this year, but one member of the D.C. Council wants to make it easier for same-sex marriages performed here to be ended. more ›

Though they succeeded in the Senate, proponents of same-sex marriage in Maryland simply couldn't muster the votes in the General Assembly last year. This year, they hope that a stronger coalition and support from Gov. Martin O'Malley will make Maryland the eighth jurisdiction in the country to allow same-sex marriage. more ›

The Post writes today that a Pew Research Center reports has found that marriage rates across the U.S. are hovering at the 50 percent mark, a drop from the 57 percent that took the plunge in 2000. more ›

Some people just never learn. Like the outspoken Bishop Harry Jackson -- who, according to Bruce DePuyt, stands "poised to fight" Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley in 2012 over same sex marriage. more ›

On Friday, Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley delivered an address in which he announced he would sponsor a bill to allow same sex marriage in the state. more ›

At the National Governors Association meeting in Salt Lake City on Friday, Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley said he is leaning toward sponsoring a bill next year to allow same-sex marriage in Maryland. more ›

In yet another update to one of our Morning Roundup notes, the Maryland House of Delegates just voted to send the bill allowing same-sex marriage back to the Judiciary Committee. The Post notes that this is "an acknowledgment by supporters that it did not have sufficient votes to pass on the floor" and it likely kills the bill for another year. more ›

Another hurdle in the effort to legalize same-sex marriage in Maryland will likely be cleared today: the Associated Press reports that the state's Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee is ready to vote on proposed legislation to legalize gay marriage. The bill is expected to pass the committee, clearing the way for a full Senate vote. The Committee recently held a hearing on the Senate bill during which young people delivered some moving testimony. Currently, the measure has the support of 23 state Senators; 24 votes would be needed for the legislation to pass Maryland's historically more socially conservative Senate. A similar bill is expected to pass the House with far less fuss. more ›

The Maryland Senate's Judicial Proceedings Committee will hold a public hearing today on the "Religious Freedom and Civil Marriage Protection Act" -- one of the most important milestones to date for legislation which could find Maryland joining five other states and the District of Columbia in granting licenses for same-sex marriages. more ›

Last Friday, Mayor Vince Gray announced that he would be appointing Jeffrey Richardson, the current president of the Gertrude Stein Democratic Club, as director of the the city's Office of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Affairs. Many are hoping that Gray, who called Richardson "a respected and credible voice for the GLBT community," will have a more robust relationship with Richardson than previous mayor Adrian Fenty had with Christopher Dyer, the last GLBT liason who admitted that he never met with Fenty face-to-face during his term to discuss issues. more ›

You know, after the highest court in the land hands you yet another defeat, you think you'd shake hands and admit that maybe, just maybe, you'd lost this one battle. But that's not the custom of opponents of same-sex marriage in the District, who took this week's Supreme Court decision not to hear an appeal on marriage equality as a, well, declaration of war. more ›

Last week, we noted that the Supreme Court was preparing to release a decision on the petition filed by Bishop Harry Jackson requesting that the District's gay marriage law be suspended pending the completion of a citywide referendum on the issue. The Court ruled today, turning away Jackson yet again. more ›

Earlier this month, we highlighted the marriage of Mark Reed and Dante Walkup -- two men who wed in a Dallas, Texas hotel ballroom as D.C.-based official Sheila Alexander-Reid presided via Skype -- as a clever exploit of the jumbled legislation on same-sex unions. But it looks like we (and several other more prominent media outlets) may have jumped the gun a bit. Amanda Hess reports today that the District's marriage bureau has "kicked back" Reed and Walkup's marriage certificate. more ›

Via The Daily What, here's a pretty incredible interpretation of the District of Columbia's same-sex marriage laws. Mark Reed and Dante Walkup wed in Dallas, while an authorized officiant from the District presided over the ceremony...via Skype. more ›

For about as long as we can remember, the District has been run by Congress. Sure, we were granted Home Rule in 1973, but even that move forward came with a glaring caveat -- Congress can always overrule what local officials want to do or just force them to do things they wouldn't otherwise want to. more ›

For a cause that has been dealt a lot of setbacks, I'll give local opponents of same-sex marriage this much -- they're fired up and optimistic that somehow, they'll win in the end. more ›

Wait, what? more ›

GLAA Forum tips us off to what may well be the must-see summer tour of 2010 -- the National Organization for Marriage's Summer for Marriage Tour 2010. more ›

Bishop Harry Jackson has lost pretty much every battle related to marriage equality in the District, but he's not giving up. more ›

Even though it's been two months now that same-sex couples in the District can legally marry and even longer since the last time a court ruled against a proposed ballot measure on the practice, opponents of marriage equality haven't given up the fight. more ›

Bless DC Agenda's Lou Chibbaro, Jr., who managed to stay up late enough to watch the Senate vote to block an amendment that would have forced a ballot measure on D.C.'s same-sex marriage law. The amendment, offered by Sen. Bob Bennett (R-Utah), was killed after the Senate voted 59-36 to deny a motion to waive the parliamentarian ruling that it was out of order. The vote came sometime after 1 a.m. this morning. more ›

The New York Times has started posting all the Senate Republican amendments to the health care reform bill, and, surprise, surprise, one of them concerns the District of Columbia's same-sex marriage law:

Bennett amendment: To protect the Democratic process and the right of the people of the District of Columbia to define marriage. (#3568)

Local event planner Mike Wilkinson had big hopes to get into the Guinness Book of World Records by hosting the largest ever group wedding for same-sex couples this Saturday. But he ran into a couple of snags. more ›

In the Washington Post, Tara Bahrampour and Monica Hesse write up a necessary story on same-sex marriage and the divisions it has promoted in the gay community. In places, the authors hit upon the mundane argument that marriage is a difficult decision. "For those who can't agree on whether to tie the knot, the new horizons have stirred up old conflicts," the story says. But that's just the way the story always goes, isn't it? more ›

First Hello Cupcake, and now Ben & Jerry's joins the list of dessert purveyors helping D.C. gay couples celebrate their newly granted marriage freedoms. more ›

Do read this killer blog post from Washington Post ombudsman Andy Alexander today on complaints from readers about last week's front-page photo of Jeremy Ames and Taka Ariga kissing. The two men had just emerged from D.C. Superior Court after filing for a marriage license on Wednesday, and a Post photographer captured their happy moment. But at least 27 people were considerably less happy: that's how many individuals Alexander says canceled their subscriptions because they found the image so offensive. more ›

This comes courtesy DC Agenda, which had exclusive access to the courthouse nuptials of Jeremy Moon and Bryan Legaspi earlier this morning. Their marriage, officiated by D.C. Superior Court Judge Brook Hedge, took place at roughly the same time as a religious ceremony joining James Betz and Robert Hawthorne went on outside the courthouse. The two couples marked the first legally recognized same-sex weddings to be performed in the District of Columbia on March 9. more ›

The Post reported earlier that the very first gay couples to get legally wed in the District of Columbia this morning were Jeremy Moon and Bryan Legaspi, a pair of White House staffers, and James Betz and Robert Hawthorne. The two couples appear to have held their marriage ceremonies nearly simultaneously, one inside the courthouse in judges chambers, and the other just outside the building. more ›

DCist photographer Michael Starghill was on hand at the H. Carl Moultrie Courthouse in downtown D.C. this morning, and captured these images as the expectant crowd waited for the first same-sex couples to apply for marriage licenses to emerge. Read more about the morning here. more ›