In the past week, the state of gay marriage in the US wavered again. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that California's Proposition 8 (upheld in 2008) was unconstitutional. Then one day later, Washington voted to approve gay marriage, and the bill will be signed into law very soon. That will hardly be the end of the matter, and the US will certainly witness more back and forth in the days to come, but it could be a step in the right direction.

On Proposition 8, the burning question is whether the case will be brought all the way up to the Supreme Court. The Huffington Post, in its The Top Ten Questions on the Next Steps article, claims that "many legal experts" say "the Court is less likely to take the case". For a more provocative read, The Slate attempts to unmask some of the politics between the DOMA lobby (that's "Defense of  Marriage Act") and the anti-Proposition 8 group in A Losing Proposition: Why gay-rights leaders don’t want their big Prop 8 victory to go to the Supreme Court.The more technically inclined might want to read up on a legal analysis of the case that points out how groundbreaking the ruling is.

Following the press statement released by the organisers of Seksualiti Merdeka we posted about, Malaysian activists have brought the case to court. We will have to wait till the Feb 21 hearing to find out how it goes, though.

A short snippet:

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) — Activists launched a rare legal case Tuesday aimed at fostering gay rights in Malaysia by challenging a police ban on an anti-homophobia arts festival.

The case highlights complaints about discrimination against gays at a time when international rights groups are urging authorities in Muslim-majority Malaysia to abolish laws criminalizing same-sex relations.

The acquittal this week of opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim on charges of sodomizing a male former aide prompted Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch to criticize the Malaysian government for insisting on laws that make sodomy punishable by 20-year prison sentences.

Find the full article at Yahoo! News.

This article is by guest writer Bernie Leong.

In Lillian Faderman's groundbreaking book, Gay L.A., she writes that in 1942, "A circle of lesbian friends pooled their money and purchased a row of rental houses in Los Angeles. They created an early lesbian enclave, constructing communal areas such as a swimming pool, where they would meet each other regularly; and the homes in which they did not live, they leased only to other lesbians. They provided not only fellowship for one another but also social services. For example, when the sixty-year-old resident of the community suffered a ruptured aneurysm, and doctors wanted to institutionalize her permanently, her lesbian neighbours organized rotating shifts to dress and undress her, feed her, and keep her stimulated by conversation. Against the doctors' dire predictions ('She will survive as a vegetable'), she recovered normal speech and became fully functioning after three years."

On December 15, a quietly momentous report was issued by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, titled "Discriminatory laws and practices and acts of violence against individuals based on their sexual orientation and gender identity".

The report not only documents laws, practices and violence against people for reasons of sexual orientation and gender identity, it also correlates international human rights law to these happenings, pointing out rights violations, and provides recommendations that member states can take to redress these violations.

You can read the report in various languages such as English, French and Chinese (opens PDF).