NewsWrap for the week ending December 15, 2012

SUMMARY

Equality on the Way - The Uruguay House overwhelmingly passes a marriage equality bill that most believe will be approved in the Senate and signed into law by the president in early 2013 …

Friend or Foe - pressure grows on the Obama administration to file friend of the court briefs supporting marriage equality in the two cases coming before the Supreme Court next year …

Good Money After Bad - the Republican majority in the U.S. House ups the ante to 2 million taxpayer dollars in its legal defense of the equality-banning Defense of Marriage Act …

Dominoes - Western Australia becomes the latest state or territory "Down Under" to have marriage equality on the parliamentary agenda …

Business of Love - honeymooners make tourism phones ring off the hook following the first legal marriage of a gay male couple on the Dutch Caribbean island of Saba…

Proud of Prejudice - an avowedly anti-gay Ukrainian political party brags about assaulting and gassing a peaceful LGBT rights demonstration in Kyiv …

Rate Hike for Bed and Bias - a court in Chile fines a motel for sexual orientation-based discrimination in the first such case since the enactment of the country's long-languishing anti-bias law earlier this year …

Curses and Blessings - Uganda's parliament adjourns, possibly until as late as February 2013, without considering the so-called "Kill the Gays Bill," while the nation's homophobic House Speaker Rebecca Kadaga is ironically blessed by anti-LGBT Pope Benedict XVI at a so-called "human rights conference" in Rome ....

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