Mercury News Headlines

SAN FRANCISCO — An attempt by civil rights groups to keep sponsors of California's same-sex marriage ban from obtaining internal campaign documents could delay a verdict in the federal trial on the constitutionality of Proposition 8, lawyers on both sides said Tuesday.

JACKSON, Miss. — A lesbian student who wanted to take her girlfriend to her senior prom is asking a federal judge to force her Mississippi school district to reinstate the dance it canceled.

Republican state Sen. Roy Ashburn said today he is gay, ending days of speculation that began after his arrest last week for investigation of driving under the influence.

More witnesses are testifying in the federal lawsuit filed by plaintiffs trying to overturn California's same-sex marriage ban.

More witnesses are testifying in the federal lawsuit filed by plaintiffs trying to overturn California's same-sex marriage ban.

Gay man testifies parents forced him into therapy to make him become heterosexual. Prop 8 attorney tries to get Ryan Kendall to concede some people may try to convert from being homosexual voluntarily, but he says that's not true.

CONCORD, N.H. — Three weeks after the state legalized gay marriage, opponents today asked a House committee to repeal the law.

Any good courtroom drama unfolds on several levels. The lawyers build their walls of evidence, hoping to knock a hole in the edifice of the opposition.

In a case that could have far-reaching implications for gay rights, a Santa Cruz woman is seeking to maintain joint custody of 10-month-old twins that she and her former partner, the biological mother of the children, had agreed to raise.   Prop. 8 trial: Custody questions | More

SAN FRANCISCO — The first week of the historic Proposition 8 trial ended Friday with equal parts raw emotion and hotly debated expert testimonyThe emotion came from Helen Zia, a San Francisco-based writer who married her partner, Lia, in 2008, making it down the aisle a few months before