A poll conducted for the Washington Post shows that a majority of voters back the right to marry for all couples regardless of their sexual orientation. The poll does show a significant racial divide on the subject; while eithty-three percent of white voters back marriage equality, only thirty-seven percent of African American voters are supportive. There is also significant support for a referendum to sustain the law 2009 law passed by the City Council.

Although most District residents are in sync with the council in support of same-sex marriage, there is widespread public support for putting the question to a city-wide vote.

Nearly six in 10 residents say they would prefer to vote on the issue. City leaders have said a public vote would be discriminatory. “I don’t think it should be a decree made by the government,” said Pablo Barreyro, 72, of Chevy Chase. “I don’t think it should be left to a small party of politicians. . . . I really wonder what the outcome would be if it becomes available for public input.”

If it lands on the ballot, however, the District would be well positioned to become the first state-level jurisdiction in the country where voters embraced same-sex marriage, according to the poll.

Nearly six in 10 D.C. residents, including 83 percent of whites, favor making it legal for gay couples to marry.

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But some divisions are evident in the local black community on this issue, with sharp divides by church attendance and education.

One in five African Americans who attend church services weekly favor same-sex marriage, and support rises to 47 percent among those who attend less often. A narrow majority of black college graduates supports gay marriage, compared with about a third of African Americans with less formal education.

Read more about marriage equality in Washington, DC in the Washington Post.

CBS News reports that Cindy McCain, the wife of 2008 Republican Presidential Nominee Senator John McCain publicly joined the fight for the right for marriage equality. Appearing in a photoshoot by Adam Bouska with tape over her mouth and a “NOH8″ logo on her face, McCain is hoping her position can bring attention to the efforts to overturn California’s Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage.

McCain’s appearance comes as former Bush Adminstration Solicitor General Ted Olson, is in Court challenging Proposition 8, who recently published a column in Newsweek arguing his belief in the fundemental right for gay and lesbian couples to marry. Olson’s arguments were joined by Robert Levy, Chairman of the Cato Institute and conservative Fox News Contibutor Margaret Hoover in speaking  out on the conservative case for marriage.

McCain, who approached the campaign offering her support, having been a champion for her daughter Meghan McCain, a vocal advocate for same-sex marriage and the keynote speaker at the 2009 Log Cabin Republican National Convention. In a piece, published by GayPolitics.com, McCain is joined by a number of notable Republican leaders, including Vice President Dick Cheney, McCain-Palin Campaign Manager Scott Schmidt, California Governor Arnold Schwarzeger, San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders, Massachussets Republican Gubernatorial Candidate Charlie Baker who is running with openly gay Richard Tisei, among many more.

Reuters analyzes one of the central claims made against same-sex marriage, whether gays can raise children:

The quality of the relationship between the child and the parents, the relationship between the parents, and the economic resources available to the family, were the top issues for healthy children,’ [Michael Lamb, head of the Social and Developmental Psychology Department at Cambridge University] said.

Kids had no trouble with their own sexual identity or other development due to growing up with same-sex parents, he argued, and the ways fathers and mothers interacted with kids was not as important as having two parents, he said.

“Children clearly benefit when they have two parents, both of them actively involved,” said Lamb. Asked if mothers and fathers interacted differently with children, he replied, “It is now quite clear that those differences in and of themselves do not significantly affect children’s adjustment,” he said.

Studies reject the conclusion that children are abused more when raised by same-sex couples.

“There is no evidence that gays or lesbians are more likely to sexually abuse children,” he said. “This is one of those fairly old canards.”

Read the rest of the article at Reteurs.com. To learn more about the trial, visit the American Foundation for Equal Rights.

Noted New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, opines on the unique legal team of former Solicitor General Ted Olson and prominent Democratic attorney David Boies, as they tackle the most significant legal challenge to restrictions on same-sex marriage:

In 2000, Olson and Boies sparred with each other in Washington over which candidate would marry the country. Now they have joined forces here to spar with Prop 8 defenders over who can marry.

“Ted Olson and David Boies, so what are they up to?” Olson laughed, summarizing the confusion and conspiracy theories that their union inspired.

As the sun set on the Bay Bridge behind him and the curtain dropped on the first week of the dramatic trial to challenge the constitutionality of the state’s ban on same-sex marriage, Olson reviewed the case: “We’re going to explain why allowing same-sex couples to have that same right that the rest of us have is not going to hurt heterosexual marriages. It has no point at all except some people don’t want to recognize gays and lesbians as normal, as human beings.”

Boies, wearing a flag pin on his lapel, said that the state of California is engaged in “gay bashing.” He spoke intensely about the gay and lesbian plaintiffs, who offered poignant testimony about their loving relationships and about wanting to be liked and accepted: “These people are people you would want your child to grow up and marry. You can be a child molester and get married. You can be a wife beater and get married. You can be a child-support scofflaw and get married. The importance of that emotional relationship is so vital to the pursuit of happiness that even prison felons, who aren’t really procreating, have a right to get married.”

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I asked the lawyers if they were disappointed that the president who had once raised such hope in the gay community now seemed behind the curve.

“Damned right,” Boies snapped. “I hope my Democratic president will catch up to my conservative Republican co-counsel.”

Read the rest of Dowd’s column in the New York Times. To learn more about Olson and Boies’s case, visit the American Foundation for Equal Rights.

Conservative Fox News Contributor and member of the Advisory Board of the America Foundation For Equal Rights, Margaret Hoover, penned a column for Fox News why she as a Republican is joing the fight to give gay and lesbian couples the right to marry.

I encourage everyone, but especially Republicans, to consider Mr. Olson’s arguments on the merits, both in his opening statement and throughout the trial’s ensuing three weeks.   The plaintiff’s counsel seeks to convince Judge Vaughn R. Walker that the Supreme Court has already decided in Loving v. Virginia, Turner v. Safely, and in Lawrence v. Texas among others, that the right to marry is a fundamental right currently denied to an entire class of American citizens.  This is unconstitutional.

We Republicans have often found ourselves on the wrong side of civil rights struggles since the 1960s, but there was a reason that Martin Luther King, Jr.’s father is said to have supported Republicans.

Republicans were historically the party ever-expanding freedom to disenfranchised minorities, from newly liberated slaves to giving women the right to vote.  Susan B. Anthony was a Republican.  By supporting the AFER trial we have an opportunity to establish our historic credibility on civil rights issues once again.  But we should support marriage equality because it is the right thing to do.

Read the rest of Hoover’s column at FoxNews.com.