According to a post on KITV.com:

The bill passed 18 to 5. Gov. Neil Abercrombie said he would sign the bill into law. That could happen as soon as this week.

More here!

But that’s exactly what one Maryland Republican has done and it speaks volumes about the character of this man.

According to a post at: Steve Charing OUTSpoken:

The GOP has devised a moniker for these moderates: RINO—Republicans In Name Only. There is no place in the Republicans’ so-called “big tent” for RINOs, and so they will vanish at some point, switch parties, or struggle to persevere.

But in Maryland, one Republican social moderate has taken a stand and put principles over politics. Former Senate Minority Leader Allan H. Kittleman (Carroll, Howard) announced one week before the General Assembly was convened that he would introduce a bill that would grant all couples—gay and straight—civil unions.

Find out where this got him at Steve Charing OUTSpoken!  I’m sure you can guess the results.

More at: HomoRadical!

Matt Barber, who heads the Liberty Counsel, has been actively seeking a boycott of the event unless GOProud was dismissed as a co-sponsor.

“Among other things, GOProud advocates in favor of both ’gay marriage’ and ’civil unions,’ against pro-marriage constitutional amendments ; is pushing for the repeal of ’Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,’ and advocates in favor of federal ’partnership benefits’ for homosexuals,” LaBarbera quoted Barber as writing in an open email.

Now Focus on the Family has responded. Senior Vice-President Tom Minnery told right-wing site One News Now he has no problem with other CPAC co-sponsors disagreeing with Focus on the Family, including GOProud.

“We think we’ve got to engage the broader conservative movement and to be salt and light in that environment,” he said. “We believe that social conservatism, biblical Christianity has a lot to say to the political culture–and we want to be where the action is, so that’s why we’re engaging it.”

He opposes the boycott. Instead, he advocated coming to the conference “to counter the agenda of GOProud.”

On its website, GOProud wrote, “GOProud looks forward to continuing to work with the conservative movement to promote policies that will improve the lives of all Americans, including gays and lesbians.”

More at: Edge Boston!

Read more at: Queerty!

Sen. Heather Steans, a first-term Democrat whose district encompasses the state’s largest concentration of gay and lesbian residents, said her “Equal Marriage Act” will open a new front in the effort to provide full legal rights to same-sex couples.

Until now, gay-rights activists in Illinois have focused their efforts on gaining approval in the Illinois House for a “civil unions” bill that essentially would provide same-sex couples with most of the basic rights that accrue from marriage — without some of the controversy of calling it that.

Read the entire post at: Chicago Sun Times!

While Massachusetts is the only state to allow gay marriage, nine other states and Washington D.C. have begun offering civil unions or domestic partnerships that give some or all of the state level legal protections of marriage.  But for couples in state-sanctioned domestic partnerships, civil unions or same-sex marriages, filing federal income taxes can involve doing three sets of paperwork instead of one.  That’s because the state-sanctioned unions do not enable couples to file federal taxes jointly due to the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) which prohibits the Federal Government from treating same-sex relationships as marriages, even if they are recognized as marriages by the state.

Read more at Gay Executive.com where they seek to provide career, financial and political information and advice to gay professionals.

Well, the pollsters at Quinnipiac University posed that question, which is certain to become more prominent as the presidential general election campaign unfolds, to 1,783 Americans across the country.

Read what the finding were at latimesblogs.latimes.com.