Fridae

Two historic appeals on marriage are being argued in the US Supreme Court this week. One is a challenge to the federal Defense of Marriage Act. The other is about an amendment to the state constitution in California. Douglas Sanders, Professor Emeritus in Law at Canada’s University of British Columbia and Thailand's Chulalongkorn University, provides a backgrounder to the two cases.

Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz has become somewhat of a hero for rebutting a shareholder who complained that the company's support of same-sex marriage was hurting the company’s stock price at the company's annual meeting last week.

A group of parents associated with PFLAG China wrote in an open letter to the delegates of the National People's Congress urging them to legalise same-sex marriage. A recent poll on Chinese Internet portal Sina.com shows 52% of over 72,000 respondents say they support same-sex marriage.

A lesbian couple, who held the first same-sex wedding at Tokyo Disney Resort, has made headlines around the world after they tweeted photographs of their celebrations last Friday.

At least 60 American corporations including Apple Inc, Nike Inc, Facebook Inc, Morgan Stanley, Intel Corp, Xerox Corp, AIG Inc and Cisco Systems Inc have indicated that they will sign on to two legal briefs to signal their support for same-sex marriage.

France's lower house of parliament on Tuesday approved a sweeping bill to legalise same-sex marriage and give the same rights to all married couples to adopt children.

The Rights and Liberties Protection Department and the House committee on Legal Affairs, Justice, and Human Rights have held the first of a series of public hearings to consider civil unions that would allow same-sex couples equal marriage rights.

A bill to legalise same-sex marriage in Britain cleared a major hurdle Tuesday, which may see the UK joining a growing list of countries around the globe 

French MPs on Saturday approved the main clause in a bill to legalise same-sex marriage, despite huge protests earlier in the month that saw hundreds of thousands of people in Paris oppose the measure.

A federal appeals court in New York became the latest to strike down a portion of the Defense of Marriage Act, a federal law which defines marriage as being exclusively between a man and a woman.