With marriages to be available for Minnesota's gay couples starting Aug. 1, Duluth residents Gary Anderson and Gary Boelhower are getting ready to do something that seemed impossible when they started dating three years ago: plan a wedding.

The Minnesota House has scheduled a Thursday debate and floor vote on the bill to legalize same-sex marriage in the state.

Searching for compromise on a divisive issue, the Boy Scouts of America is proposing to partially lift its long-standing exclusion of gays--allowing them as youth members but continuing to bar them as adult leaders.

With April 15 on the horizon, the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) means that married same-sex couples across the country are dealing with the indignity, confusion, and expense caused by the federal Defense of Marriage Act.

Coming on the heels of the Supreme Court's hearing of oral arguments in a challenge to the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in the case of Edie Windsor, a lesbian from New York who married her longtime partner in 2007 but whose spousal inheritance rights were denied after her spouse's death, same-sex family rights received welcome support last week when the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) released a technical report on the long-term progress of children of same-sex parents.

Last week, several national LGBT groups and a cooperating attorney filed an administrative challenge to Medicare?s ban on medically necessary healthcare for transgender patients. Medicare, which provides healthcare to Americans ages 65 and older and younger people with certain qualifying disabilities, currently prohibits all forms of gender reassignment surgeries regardless of the individual patient?s diagnosis or serious medical needs.

Court could avoid ruling on gay marriage ban