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While the rest of the U.S. eagerly waits for Nevada to finish counting its 2020 election votes, the Silver State has quietly achieved a major milestone: It’s the first state in the country to enshrine protections for gay marriage in its constitution, reversing an older amendment that had banned it. More than 60 percent of Nevada voters on Tuesday decided in favor of a ballot measure requiring the state to issue marriage licenses to couples regardless of gender and to treat their marriages as equal. “It feels good that we let the voters decide,” said Chris Davin, president of Equality Nevada. “The people said this, not judges or lawmakers. This was direct democracy—it’s how everything should be.” Voters in the Silver State had previously passed a constitutional amendment that banned gay marriage.
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Kenneth Felts spent his entire life in the closet. But at 90 years old, he felt ready to come out. Since the age of 12, when he first knew he was gay, Felts said, he had been living a double life, battling between dueling identities. There was Ken, his outward-facing straight self, and then there was his alter ego, whom he referred to internally as Larry, a gay man he spent nearly eight decades stifling. “I learned from the Bible not to be gay. I was planning to take this secret to the grave with me,” said Felts, who lives in Arvada, Colo., and grew up in a religious Christian family. “I could not reconcile these two parts of me,” Felts said. “For a long time, Ken did a pretty good job of keeping Larry at bay.”
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The Supreme Court ruled Monday that a landmark civil rights law protects gay, lesbian and transgender people from discrimination in employment, a resounding victory for LGBT rights from a conservative court. The court decided by a 6-3 vote that a key provision of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 known as Title VII that bars job discrimination because of sex, among other reasons, encompasses bias against LGBT workers. “An employer who fires an individual for being homosexual or transgender fires that person for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex,” Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote for the court. “Sex plays a necessary and undisguisable role in the decision, exactly what Title VII forbids.” Justices Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh and Clarence Thomas dissented.
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According to EURACTIV.COM WITH AFP, Romania’s constitutional court ruled on September 27, 2018 that gay couples should have the same family rights as heterosexuals, a judgment that runs counter to a referendum next month seeking to interdict gay marriage. The court said gay couples had the same rights to a private life and a family life as heterosexuals and thus should “benefit, in the long term, from legal... recognition of their rights and obligations”. However, the upcoming October, 2018 referendum is seeking to limit the constitutional definition of family to heterosexual, married couples.
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A landmark judgment by India’s highest court has overturned a colonial-era law that criminalizes consensual gay sex, in a long-fought for victory for the LGBTQ community. The five-judge bench reached a unanimous decision Thursday in the capital New Delhi. Delivering his decision, Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra said, “The LGBTQ community has the same fundamental rights as citizens. The identity of a person is very important and we have to vanquish prejudice, embrace inclusion and ensure equal rights.” “Intimacy and privacy is a matter of choice. We have to bid adieu to stereotypes and prejudices,” he said. The court verdict is a major milestone for LGBTQ-identifying people across the country, where homosexuality remains a social taboo and gay people face endemic discrimination.
