Wed in the World: Mixed Messages

Edie Windsor marries, Kylie Minogue holds out, and Paris isn’t always a city of love.

Aruba

Gay marriage has officially arrived on the island of Aruba, where its parliament voted to amend the Civil Code to include the option of registered partnerships for both opposite-sex and same-sex couples this year. However, nearby islands of Curacao and St. Maarten still have civil codes in which marriage is still defined as the union between a man and a woman.

Australia

Superstar Kylie Minogue and British fiancé Joshua Sasse have publicly announced they will not marry until Minogue’s home country legalizes gay marriage. “We will not get married until this law has passed in Australia,” confirmed Sasse in an interview. In the meantime, Minogue and Sasse will continue to fight for marriage equality with organizations like the “Say I Do Down Under” campaign.

Missouri

Ben Carson spoke out against gay marriage at the Pensmore National Symposium on Religious Liberty at the College of the Ozarks. At a press conference after his speech, Carson stated that all that stands between the United States and “utter chaos” is opposition to same-sex marriage. During his speech Carson also proclaimed “transgender stuff” to be “absurd”.

New Jersey

Paramus Catholic High School fired Kate Drumgoole because she’s in a same-sex marriage. Drumgoole filed a lawsuit in Hackensack Superior Court, and thousands of alumni signed an open letter to school officials chastising them for the firing. The Archdiocese of Newark later announced the school’s top leaders (President James Vail and Principal Stephanie Macaluso) have been “placed on leave.”

New York

Rapper Lil Wayne claims he officiated a same-sex wedding between two fellow male inmates while serving at Rikers Island in New York. In his memoir Gone ‘Til November, the rapper states he alongside other inmates decorated a hall of the prison with toilet paper and used thirteen bottles of Gatorade to toast the happy couple as a substitute for champagne.Also in NYC: Edie Windsor — whose marriage to the late Thea Spyer sparked the Supreme Court case that overturned DOMA — married current partner Judith Kasen at City Hall. The brides had reportedly been seeing each other since 2015.ParisApproximately 24,000 demonstrators crowded Trocadero Plaza — close to the Eiffel Tower —calling for a repeal of French marriage equality just six months before the nation’s upcoming presidential election. This is one in a series of continuing conservative protests since France first passed marriage equality in 2013.(—Jeffrey Jame Keyes)