The U.S. Supreme Court issued orders this morning and — so far — no word on a couple of pending cases related to equal treatment of gay people, including one from Arkansas.
Robb Ryerse, who co-pastors Viontage Fellowship in Fayetteville with his wife, is on the web with an announcement of a Republican primary challenge to Republican U.S. Rep. Steve Womack of Rogers. He departs from Arkansas Republic orthodoxy on the issue of equal treatment for gay people and calls himself an "Eisenhower Republican."
The ACLU of Arkansas and the ACLU LGBT Project have been permitted to join the challenge of the state law barring Fayetteville from providing local civil rights protections to LGBT people.
Circuit Judge Doug Martin of Fayetteville has given the city of Fayetteville more time to prepare to fight the state's effort to dismiss its argument that a state law unconstitutionally overrode the city civil rights ordinance.
Give the so-called Christians at the Religious Right Family Council credit: They make no bones about their desire to preserve legal discrimination against gay people.
Add a Hot Springs business group to the list opposing proposed legislation to require that public restrooms be used by people with matching birth gender (the final legislation isn't on file; who knows what it will require for those with indeterminate gender at birth.) It's cold comfort giving the multiple ways in which the legislature, governor, attorney general and others defend legal discrimination against LGBT people in Arkansas.
The Arkansas Supreme Court has reversed the circuit court decision upholding the Fayetteville civil rights ordinance, which was aimed at extending protection to LGBT people, along with other protected classes.
The state Supreme Court this morning heard oral arguments in the case challenging the legitimacy of Fayetteville's civil rights ordinance providing LGBT people protection from discrimination.
Here's a good followup from Slate on the important ruling by Mississippi federal Judge Carlton Reeves that struck down that state's so-called religious conscience law. Mississippi, as the Arkansas law did earlier, passed a law nominally said to protect religious beliefs.