Weekly Political Roundup

• Florida leads the news this week, as supporters of a state constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage scramble to collect needed signatures. In contrast, the Fairness for All Families group has released an inspirational video about their Primary Day of Action, in which volunteers talk to voters about why the amendment is bad for both LGBT and straight citizens.
• In Florida, the Okeechobee School District has asked the U.S. District Court for a summary judgment on whether a Gay-Straight Alliance should be allowed to meet on the Okeechobee High School campus. (Thanks, National Gay News.) In similar but separate news, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit claiming the high school in Ponce de Leon, Florida, is “trampling the First Amendment rights of students who support equal rights for gay people”, after the school district said it would not allow any expressions of support for gay rights, including rainbow stickers and slogans such as “I support my gay friends,” because such speech would “likely be disruptive.”
• The Indiana Senate voted to amend the state constitution to define marriage as “one man and one woman.” The proposal now goes to the House, where it is not expected to get a hearing. State law already bans same-sex marriage.
• Five Republican legislators in Iowa filed court documents urging the state supreme court to reverse a lower-court decision that overturned a law banning same-sex marriage.
• The Kentucky Senate approved a bill to block public universities from offering benefits to domestic partners of employees. Supporters of the bill say such benefits violate the state constitution, which includes an amendment banning same-sex marriage. The measure now goes to the House, which rejected a similar proposal last year. (Thanks, To Form a More Perfect Union.)
• A judge in New Jersey has issued the first ruling using the principle of equitable distribution to divide the shared assets of same-sex domestic partners after they split. The couple had united as domestic partners, but split before the state’s civil union law went into effect. A lawyer for one of the partners said it remained unclear what rights domestic partners had in terms of separating their assets.
• The challenger to Mary Wiseman, Ohio’s first openly lesbian judge, withdrew from the primary one week after saying Wiseman should not hear cases involving the state’s same-sex marriage ban amendment or other LGBT-inclusive human-rights measures. Wiseman responded that by that logic, Thurgood Marshall should not have been allowed to rule on a civil rights case.
• Hundreds of same-sex couples and other supporters of Oregon’s pending domestic partnership law rallied in Portland, in advance of a hearing on the constitutionality of the legislation, scheduled for today.
• Two Tennessee legislators, Rep. John Deberry (D-Memphis) and Senator Paul Stanley (R-Memphis) filed bills to prohibit unmarried, cohabitating individuals from adopting children.

Around the world:

• Almost 500 same-sex couples in the Czech Republic have registered as partners since the country legalized such partnerships in July 2006. Lesbian couples formed 28% of the total, an interesting contrast to their predominance in other regions. (Lesbian couples comprised 64% of same-sex marriages in Massachusetts, two years after legalization.) (Thanks, National Gay News.)
• A gay asylum seeker living in Scotland overturned a decision to send him back to his native Moldova. (Thanks, PageOneQ.)
• Turkish officials will resume efforts in court to close LGBT-rights group Lambda Istanbul, claiming it violates Turkish laws on morality.
• In the UK, a National Health Service trust is considering funding surrogacy expenses, including needed IVF cycles, for infertile same- and opposite-sex couples.