Obama Offers Spontaneous Support For Marriage Equality In Illinois

The White House announced today that President Obama would like to marriage equality in Illinois, his home state and a state where lawmakers are keen to pass a law before the current term ends in January.

"While the president does not weigh in on every measure being considered by state legislatures, he believes in treating everyone fairly and equally, with dignity and respect," said White House spokesman Shin Inouye. "Were the President still in the Illinois State Legislature, he would support this measure that would treat all Illinois couples equally."

As Chris Johnson at The Washington Blade notes, President Obama previously weighed in on state-based ballot measures in Maryland, Maine and Washington, but this is the first the commander-in-chief has put in his two cents on legislating equality at the state level, and the first time post-election.

Bernard Cherkasov from Equality Illinois obviously welcomed the president's support, telling Johnson, "With the President’s statement, Illinois lawmakers should fully understand that voting for the freedom to marry puts them on the right side of history."

News: Gay Judge, Challenger, Subway Pusher, Fox's 'Embarrassment'

Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder has signed a bill putting new limits on abortion clinics, including a law requiring that providers ask patients whether they've been coerced into having an abortion.

At least four people are dead after a plane slid off the runway in Moscow. "Emergency officials said in a televised news conference that four people were killed and another four severely injured when the plane rolled off the runway into a snowy field and disintegrated. The plane's cockpit area was sheared off from the fuselage and a large chunk gashed out near the tail."

California Gov. Jerry Brown appointed Judge Kim Colwell to the Alameda County Superior Court, making her the first lesbian to sit on that court.

Matthew McConaughey And Camila Alves welcomed their third child together.

A look ahead at Prince William and Kate Middleton's 2013.

Jesse Tyler Ferguson and fiance Justin Mikita go for a stroll on the beach in St. Barts.

Some Pakistanis are upset over a series of paintings that depicts Islamic clerics in homoerotic situations. "Officials at the National College of Arts in Lahore, Pakistan, shut down the Journal of Contemporary Art, which published the paintings by artist Muhammad Ali in a summer edition. School officials also removed all issues of the journal from campus bookstores and dissolved the journal's editorial board after the images sparked threats of violence from Islamic extremists..."

Fox News writer thinks that media supporting marriage equality in 2012 was an "embarrassing moment." "Newsies looked like an aging cast of "Glee," with almost every major news organization showing its support for gay marriage. CNN’s Anderson Cooper came out; ABC weather guy Sam Champion even married his boyfriend. But coverage isn’t just about rights, it’s about wrongs – "journalistic" attacks on Chick-fil-A, a shooting against a conservative organization that opposes gay marriage and more."

This rare amateur video of the Challenger explosion was New Scientist's most viewed of the year.

Brad Brenner at Huffington Post has a detailed look at how many gay men are using apps and online resources for their sexual and romantic needs, and how they're using them. A snippet: "More than three out of four men in our survey indicated that they struggle to find guys to connect with. Likewise, over six in 10 men said they fear getting shot down when introducing themselves, and the same number struggle with figuring out how to break the ice to initiate a conversation. Mobile app technology is easing those long-held anxieties, with 78 percent of men saying that apps allowed them to start a conversation with a guy that they otherwise wouldn't have."

The new season of Arrested Development will debut in its entirety on May 4.

Kanye West wore a crystal-studded mask during a concert in Atlantic City last night, because, you know, why not?

Despite growing criticism, New York's Journal News will publish more names and addresses of gun owners.

Police have nabbed the woman accused of pushing a man onto the subway track and to his death.

Sexy sweaters.

Flashback: 'Gay Comix' Clobbered The Closet In 1980

Marvel Comics writer John Byrne has previously said he always planned to make superhero Northstar, introduced in 1979, gay, but that corporate and cultural forces kept him in the closet until 1992.

Up to that point, Northstar's sexuality had only be hinted at, often in a denigrating manner, like when his twin sister implicitly sneered at Northstar's ambiguous relationship with an older male mentor: "You - of all people - dare to judge my love life."

It would be another twenty years before Northstar, sometimes neglected by writers for years on end, finally found happiness and married his husband in a high-profile affair attended by a who's who of Marvel superheroes. (DOMA is threatening to derail that happiness.)

Howard Cruse, Bob Ross and the other LGBT comic creators behind Gay Comix didn't have to chart such a slow course. They hit the ground running in 1980, the year Gay Comix #1 hit the underground newsstands. Of course, Gay Comix never had nervous publishers or media-driven boycotts to worry about. Nor were they dealing with super-powered heroes for children. Gay Comix was made by adults for adults to explore the waters of a changing and often sexually-charged America that, from today's perspective, looks in many ways like a distant memory.

Finding back issues of Gay Comix is a task for serious collectors, but some issues have been collected in anthologies like Robert Triptow's Gay Comics and individual editions can be found online if you look hard enough and there may even be copies at your local library. But anyway you can find Gay Comix, you should, because they're a unique look at 20th century gay life that deserve as much recognition as other heroic gay comic characters.

(Click on the images above to get a closer look...)

England's Anti-Gay Catholic Leaders Need To Lay Off The Sci-Fi

There's some more dystopian doom and gloom about marriage equality coming from the Catholic Church in England. Days after Archbishop of Westminster Vincent Nichols called conservative plans to legalize same-sex nuptials an "Orwellian plot," Roman Catholic Archbishop of Birmingham Bernard Longley is claiming that men marrying men and women marrying women will lead to unforeseen consequences because children of the future won't have both a mom and a dad because the nuclear family will be obsolete and forgotten. Or something.

"Government policy cannot foresee the full consequences, for the children involved or for wider society, of being brought up by two mothers without a father's influence or by two fathers without a mother's influence," he says in a letter to be read during Feast of the Holy Family services across Birmingham tomorrow.

"We first learn about diversity and acquire a respect for difference through the complementarity of our parents," says the stressed out Archbishop, according to The Telegraph. "The complementary love of father and mother is a precious gift that we should wish for every child."

Because in Longley and company's vision of the future, gay marriage has become the norm and straight people are no longer raising children and up is down and black is white and aliens are running the world's governments. It's even crazier and more nightmarish than anything Orwell could dream up and, like Orwell's work, complete fiction.

Mark Hundahl, Co-Owner Of Gay Magazine 'Frontiers,' Has Died

Sad news to report from Los Angeles: Mark Hundahl, the straight co-owner of LA's Frontiers magazine, has died after a battle with cancer. He was 62.

Frontiers has an excellent remembrance of Hundahl, a man who stood by the LGBT community for decades, far longer than many men of his generation. In it LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa describes Hundahl as "a tremendous ally in the fight for equality" who broke down barriers, "providing a voice to the voiceless."

LA County supervisor and longtime friend Zev Yaroslavsky meanwhile remembers Hundahl's commitment to covering the AIDS crisis. "He had a vision and he had a commitment to the LGBT community during one of the most difficult times in its history, covering the AIDS crisis from the very beginning when too many mainstream outlets misreported, downplayed or simply ignored it. His contributions deserve to be remembered, and he will be deeply missed," said Yaroslavsky.

And Frontiers publisher David Stern, one of Hundahl's closest friends, offered this touching note, "[People] called us 'the odd couple.' I'm the eternal optimist, always seeing the glass half-full. Mark, on the other hand, was more like, 'Where’s the glass? There’s water everywhere.' He always saw that you could either ride its wave or possibly drown in it. We always had each other’s back, and we never let each other drown."

Crowd Goes Wild Over Maine's First Gay Married Couple: VIDEOS

Steven Bridges and Michael Snell became the first same-sex couple to legally marry in Maine last night, and they were greeted by hundreds of cheering supporters who broke into "All You Need Is Love."

Check out video of their singing, as well as video interviews with freshly married Maine couples and the local ABC affiliate's report from this morning AFTER THE JUMP.