New Jersey

A New Jersey judge has ruled that a Monmouth County church violated the state’s discrimination laws when it prevented a lesbian couple (pictured) from holding a civil union ceremony on its property. The legal battle dates back to 2007 when the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association stopped the couple from using its boardwalk pavilion. Administrative Law Judge Solomon Metzger wrote in the ruling that the pavilion area was a public space that advertised itself as a wedding venue without any mention of religious preconditions.

Vowing to make a bill legalizing same-sex marriage a priority, the N.J. legislative leaders say they plan to make marriage equality a centerpiece of the new session that begins this week. "It's going be a fight," Senate President Stephen Sweeney (pictured) said. "We expect it to be a fight. The governor’s a decent person, and I think we can work on educating him to the fact of what it means." He doesn't expect a battle in the new Legislature, but rather with Gov. Chris Christie, who has been a staunch opponent of it.

Let this story serve as a lesson that the surrogacy process is nothing to be taken with any amount of whimsy. On one side of a long parental court fight over 5-year-old twin girls were Donald and Sean - a gay couple who live in Jersey City. On the other was Angelia, Donald’s sister, who agreed to serve as a surrogate, eventually giving birth to the girls through a donor embryo fertilized by Sean (pic). The men took custody of the children after the birth.

Around 20 students from local high schools and Princeton University gathered to talk about their experiences with being openly LGBT or ally-identified in high school at an event on campus. Sponsored by the Pride Alliance as part of LGBT Awareness Week, the discussion was also inspired by recent media coverage on bullying and harassment against LGBT people, including the story of 14-year-old Jamey Rodemeyer, who took his own life late last month. The organizers said they felt that that the event was a success.

I’ve spent a lot of time in the last twenty-four hours thinking about my daughter’s teachers and her education in Maplewood, finding myself in tremendous gratitude. As many people may be aware by now, yesterday, Vicki Knox, a teacher at Union High School, was making news and facing a school board investigation for having made disparaging comments about LGBT people on her Facebook page.

The ACLU says it questions whether special education teacher Viki Knox violated school policy regarding anti-bias rules. After her school designated October as "LGBT History Month", she went to her Facebook page and wrote, “homosexuality is a perverted spirit that has existed from the beginning of creation.” Garden State Equality calls for the firing of Knox from her job at Union High School in Union Township. No decision has been made yet on how the school district will deal with the controversy, according to Patrick Martin, Union’s superintendent of schools.

Before killing himself recently, a high school freshman talked to his mother about being gay, and he contributed an online video to “It Gets Better”. But the teasing that followed him was relentless. “Years ago, drunken driving wasn't viewed as a big deal, even though it has the potential to kill people. What we're doing with bullying is changing people's perception of it,” said a rep for NY state Senator Jeffrey Klein (pic), who supports legislation to stop cyber-bullying.