An NBC station in Tennessee is refusing to broadcast footage of a gay soldier who wants to get married. The governor of North Carolina vetoed a bill that would let state officials turn gay couples away from marriage counters -- but the bill's not dead yet. And Alabama is actually going through with a threat to stop issuing marriage licenses statewide -- but that might not have the effect they want.
Above, you can see the ad that a Tennessee station refused to air. It features a soldier talking about putting his life on the line as a military physician, and how he would like to marry his boyfriend, a state judge. So why did NBC affiliate WRCB reject the ad? Too controversial, they said. Marriage equality crosses the line.
Meanwhile, another ad just started running this week in Georgia. And even though it features various gay couples and their kids talking about marriage equality, somehow multiple TV stations deemed them appropriate to broadcast. Hopefully Georgia will survive seeing these highly controversial images.
Meanwhile in Texas, multiple anti-gay bills have gone down in flames. Many of the proposed new laws would have caused drastic harm, and several probably weren't even constitutionally valid. The most the Senate was able to pass was a non-binding declaration in opposition to LGBT couples. That's still not great, but it could have been a lot worse.
Speaking of worse, a proposed bill in North Carolina to stop LGBTs from marrying came very close to passing last week. The law would have allowed state officials to choose which citizens they want to serve or turn away, in effect using personal preference to ignore their oath of office. Governor Pat McCrory vetoed the bill after it passed the legislature, but there are still enough votes to override the veto if legislators really want to push for it.
Lawmakers in Alabama have been threatening for a while to do away with marriage licenses altogether, and now it looks like they may actually be making good on the threat. The Senate has passed a bill that stops the state from issuing licenses to any couple, gay or straight. The impact of that is actually pretty minimal: anyone can still get married, they just don't need to fill as much paperwork from the state. So, okay.