Tag Archives: State: Massachusetts

Gaypolitics.com reports: The Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund today announced it has endorsed 100 openly LGBT political candidates in 2008, making this endorsement slate the group’s largest ever. “I think reaching this milestone is a testament to a new attitude in …

In the six months after May 17, 2004, when Massachusetts began issuing marriage licenses for gay and lesbian couples, an estimated 6,100 same-sex couples married. They now average less than 1,000 a year, according to MassEquality.org, a grassroots organization working to help gay and lesbian couples achieve equality.

The Milford Daily News reports: Residents last night presented specific reasons for the Board of Selectmen to deny a strip club application, while the applicant’s attorney argued in front of the large crowd that his client meets the law and …

The Herald News reports: It’s official: a 1-mile stretch of Route 6 between the Holiday Lanes bowling alley and Westport Flooring is now an adult entertainment overlay district. The state Attorney General’s Office approved the zone as consistent with the …

The group that has led opposition to gay marriage says it will not participate in a petition drive to block out-of-state, same-sex couples from being married in Massachusetts.

The Boston Herald reports: Attorney General Martha Coakley today authorized a ballot question proposing to reinstate a nearly century old law barring out-of-state gay couples from marrying in Massachusetts. The so-called 1913 law was repealed by the Legislature in late …

LifeNews.com reports: Massachusetts judge has rejected a free speech challenge from pro-life advocates to a new buffer zone that limits the free speech rights of protestors and sidewalk counselors. A leading pro-life law firm that filed suit against the law …

The AP reports: Most states don’t recognize gay marriage — but now Hallmark does. The nation’s largest greeting card company is rolling out same-sex wedding cards — featuring two tuxedos, overlapping hearts or intertwined flowers, with best wishes inside. “Two …

U.S. Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) is looking into a Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation policy that disqualifies domestic partners from receiving coverage available to married couples.

The AP reports: Opponents of same-sex marriages are seeking a ballot question that would prevent gay and lesbian couples from getting married here if their union wouldn’t be legal in their home state. Brian Camenker of the group Mass Resistance …

The Media Newswire reports: Massachusetts voters support Gov. Deval Patrick on issues such as casino gambling, encouraging in-state movie productions and extending same-sex marriage rights, and they will vote for Barack Obama and John Kerry, according to a poll released …

The WickedLocal reports: “In front of a packed and vocal crowd at Town Hall, the Board of Selectmen last night denied End Zone Sports Pub’s application for adult entertainment, saying it is outside a special zoning district.”

The Boston Globe reports: A day after Governor Deval Patrick signed a law allowing same-sex couples from out of state to get married here, a few couples are beginning to apply for marriage licenses. Six or seven marriage license applications …

“As for Justice Marshall, on a national level, she is perhaps best known as author of the opinion that legalized same-sex marriage in Massachusetts.”

The Boston Herald reports: “The New York couple is part of a same-sex marriage wave predicted to pump $111 million into Bay State business over the next three years and bring 30,000 out-of-state gay couples – most of them from …

The Milford Daily News reports: “The trio of candidates vying to replace state Rep. Paul Loscocco, R-Holliston, backed his choice to support gay marriage and repeal a 95-year-old law that blocked nonresidents from marrying here if those unions would be …

The AP reports: “Massachusetts on Thursday began allowing any gay couple to get married there as Gov. Deval Patrick signed a bill repealing a 1913 law that had blocked most out-of-state same-sex couples from tying the knot.”

The AP reports the roll call vote in Massachusetts. The report begins: Here’s how members of the Massachusetts House voted Tuesday on repealing a 1913 law that blocked out-of-state gays from marrying in Massachusetts if their union would not be …

The 118-35 vote came after the state Senate voted for the repeal earlier this month, and Gov. Deval Patrick has said he will sign the bill . . .

Part III argues that an exemption for religious organizations in Massachusetts adoption laws would not violate current principles of the Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses.

The AP reports that the Massachusetts House will take proposals to repeal the 1913 law that restrictions same-sex “marriage” to residents.

The AP reports: The Massachusetts House of Representatives has given its initial approval to a bill that would require all future legislation be written in language that is gender neutral. The one-paragraph bill says legislation should contain non-gendered phrases such …

The Blog of the Family Institute of Connecticut reports: In just a few weeks same-sex couples from Connecticut may be getting “married” in Massachusetts, if our neighboring state repeals a law respecting the marriage definition of other states. In Connecticut, …

Newsday has this report: “Thousands of gay couples from New York and other Northeastern states are expected to marry in Massachusetts if the state follows through on a move toward letting them wed.  But many others don’t see any need …

OneNewsNow.com reports: Four lawmakers spoke briefly in favor of repealing the law and none spoke against the proposal. Then in less than one minute, says Camenker, the presiding officer called for a voice vote and announced that the repeal had …

“The Massachusetts Senate voted Tuesday to repeal a 1913 law used to bar out-of-state gay couples from marrying in the state, a law that critics say was originally aimed at interracial marriages.”

The AP reports: Now an effort is gaining momentum to repeal a 1913 state law that has banned most out of state gay couples from getting married. The law says couples cannot be married in Massachusetts if their unions would …

CWNews reports: A Massachusetts court has allowed the Boston archdiocese to move forward with an appeal against taxes levied by the town of Scituate against the property of a closed parish church. The case could form a precedent for the …

The ABA Journal reports: “A Massachusetts woman in a same-sex relationship who married her partner as soon as it was possible to do so in the state cannot act as a plaintiff in a medical malpractice case concerning a time …

“State lawmakers are expected to vote next week on repealing a 1913 law that prevents out-of-state gay and lesbian couples from getting married in Massachusetts . . .”

The Boston Globe reports: . . . Five miles south, the city’s historic Taunton River waterfront and the Battleship Cove tourist attraction have gotten a boost with a new boardwalk. And plans are moving forward for a commuter rail station …

The Boston Herald reports: “Boston police are cracking down on roving Brighton brothels, deploying undercover decoys to infiltrate the illicit online sex rings in an all-out effort to wipe out the blight of neighborhood prostitution . . . But the …

Milford Daily News: “The selectmen’s office yesterday received another application for adult entertainment, this time from a business within the new adult entertainment overlay district.”

The Bradenton Herald reports: “An argument that started at a local strip club between two groups of men later turned violent in a Bradenton neighborhood with a gunfight that left two men shot early Friday . . .”

The dominant narrative may have had some truth to it in the pre–Madonna/Paris Hilton era. But it ignores several key changes in contemporary teenaged life—changes that the Gloucester posse has graciously illustrated for us.

WBZTV.com reports: There’s a stunning twist to the sudden rise in teen pregnancies at Gloucester High School. Seventeen students there are expecting and many of them became that way on purpose . . . Time Magazine first reported that nearly …

WorldNetDaily reports: . . . Transgender activists, many of whom had undergone hormone treatments and surgical procedures to alter their gender appearance, marched down the main street in Northampton, Mass., last week, carrying signs demanding the passage of new laws …

“Despite an official vote by the Governor’s Council against the move, the Governor of Massachusets has appointed a radical lesbian activist attorney to the judiciary.”

Concurring Opinions reports: A Commissioner at the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination (the Commission) has announced that effective immediately the Massachusetts Maternity Leave Act (MMLA) will apply to new parents of either sex. This means that both mothers and fathers (or …

Peter J. Smith reports on LifeSiteNews.com: Massachusetts parents objecting to a public school’s indoctrination of their children in homosexuality without their knowledge or consent may have their day in court, if the US Supreme Court grants a petition to allow …

The AP reports on OneNewsNow: “Nearly 100,000 Massachusetts taxpayers have been fined for failing to obtain health insurance, even as a major survey concludes the effort to create near-universal coverage in the state is meeting key goals.”

Legal Blog Watch reports: . . . But on Friday, the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals put an end to the suspense, issuing this brief press release: The United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit and Judge …

The Milford Daily News report: Police and Fire Chief Ernest Horn will present information to selectmen Monday on the impact and rights of adult entertainment businesses and recommend the town adopts regulations similar to those of Milford. The End Zone …

The Rutherford Institute has issued this press release. It begins: School officials at a Massachusetts high school have agreed to settle a lawsuit over the school’s alleged censorship of conservative political posters. The lawsuit, which was filed in U.S. District …

The Religion Clause blog reports: “An historic church in Lanesville, Massachusetts last Monday filed a federal lawsuit against the city’s zoning board which is refusing to allow the church to add a multi-use addition onto its original post-Civil War building. …

“State Senator Dianne Wilkerson has filed a budget amendment to increase taxpayer funding for the pro-homosexual school programs by a whopping $300,000.”

en. Edward M. Kennedy has a malignant brain tumor. Doctors for the Massachusetts Democrat say tests conducted after Kennedy suffered a seizure this weekend show a tumor in his left parietal lobe. Preliminary results from a biopsy of the brain identified the cause of the seizure as a malignant glioma, they said . . .

. . . “In Massachusetts, the sky didn’t fall in,” and “the institution of marriage didn’t end,” for heterosexual couples, Newsom said yesterday in a telephone interview. “We have a good chance” of defeating the amendment, he said, but “it’s going to be a tough campaign.”

In the past two weeks, Harvard students opened their mailboxes to find a blue “opt-out” card as part of the Abortion Opt-Out Campaign of Harvard Right to Life (HRL). The initiative allows students to request a refund of the part of their Blue Cross Blue Shield (BCBS) health insurance plan that funds elective abortions—one dollar per term . . .

Allowing a convicted killer to get a sex-change operation would pose insurmountable safety and security problems for the state prison system, the Massachusetts corrections chief said.

The AP reports: “Suffolk District Attorney Daniel Conley has appointed his first liaison to sexual minority communities.”

Police Chief Thomas O’Loughlin will be on hand tonight to present board members research he has done on policing and crime attributable to adult entertainment businesses.

. . . the Worcester City Council last night gave preliminary approval to an amendment allowing adult entertainment establishments in certain parts of the downtown while still precluding them from most of the central business district.

A doctor at the renowned Children’s Hospital Boston has launched a new program to drug children to delay puberty so they can decide whether they want a male or a female body, according to a report today in the Boston Globe.

On Wednesday, April 16, the House Ways and Means Committee released its 2009 budget with $500,000 that will go directly to to fund homosexual programs in the public schools.

Massachusetts’ highest court has stripped a Cambridge woman of her ability to express herself by dancing naked in Harvard Square.

The superintendent of a public school that sparked a federal lawsuit by teaching homosexuality to children as young as kindergarten has told another worried parent he can review course material, but he has no right to withdraw his child from class during lessons.

The letter-writing campaign illustrates how perspectives have changed about behavior such as cross-dressing. Twenty years ago, several lawyers acknowledged, it was highly unlikely that the legal community would have rallied around a judge who was arrested under circumstances like those in the Somma case . . .

“We are unable to comply with your request for a name change based on the documentation you sent because of the Defense of Marriage Act,” the letter of refusal to Jason Hair-Wynn stated.

Two issues of Muslim practice — whether the call to prayer should ring out across Harvard Yard and whether the university should grant women separate gym hours — have unleashed small waves of controversy over how Harvard practices tolerance.

Greg Scott, a spokesman for the group, said if Mr. Kellogg was to grant the couple a divorce or annulment, the ruling would “overrule” the will of Missourians, who in 2004 voted overwhelming for a constitutional amendment that prevents same-sex marriages from being conducted or recognized in Missouri . . .

UC Davis Law professors Vikram Amar and Alan Brownstein have this commentary on Findlaw discussing the California ruling and the larger policy implications of homeschooling.

On March 8, scores of angry residents braved a cold rainstorm to petition outside the restaurant . . .

“. . . legislation introduced by State Representative Carl Sciortino that would add the terms “gender identity and gender expression” to current state antidiscrimination and hate crime laws.”

Lisa Van der Pool reports on the Boston Business Journal. She writes: Massachusetts has a dubious reputation for losing talented workers to less pricey markets. But a trend that runs counter to the talent drain has emerged in the form …

“Pro-family activists in Massachusetts warn that a series of bills pending in the state legislature are pivotal for the future of the legal institution of marriage in the state and across the US.”

The club owner said the Licensing Board used incorrect information when it denied a license for so-called “adult entertainment.”

ADF allied attorney: “I’m not aware of one of this magnitude anywhere. I am confident the court will find the buffer zone unconstitutional.”

  Bronislaus B. Kush reports on the Worcester Telegram (2.18.2008) that the legislature is considering changes to its new law in the wake of an ADF suit: A line drawn across the asphalt, however, warned them not to get within …

At issue is whether judges have too much discretion in deciding how much alimony should be paid, for how long, and whether they unfairly favor ex-wives.

It appears substantive due process allows parents to abort their child, but it doesn’t allow them to shield their child from H-Agenda indoctrination in public schools. A 1st circuit panel has issued its opinion . . .

“A gay woman married in Massachusetts has filed for divorce in Rhode Island’s Superior Court, a tactical move intended to skirt a major roadblock caused by a recent state Supreme Court ruling . . . ”

By Chris Stovall WorldNet Daily features this article today, in which constitutional attorneys including Herb Titus, Scott Fitzgibbon and others comment on whether Mitt Romney, when governor of Massachusetts, could legitimately have refused to implement statewide same-sex “marriage” in the wake …

The Boston Globe carries this report on the vote: A joint session of the Legislature swiftly defeated a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage by a vote of 151 to 45, eliminating any chances of getting it on the ballot in …

The Opine Editorials blog has a post titled “protracted, hard-fought litigation” and lawyers — Oh My!