The only US jurisdiction currently to allow homosexual weddings has suspended them while equally moving to grant such unions historic legal recognition.
A circuit judge in Multnomah County, Oregon, ordered a freeze on gay marriage licenses to give the State Legislature a chance to formalise them.

Judge Frank Bearden also ordered the state to recognise the 3,022 licenses issued in the county since 3 March.

The move is a first for the entire US, where the issue has divided opinion.

There are plenty of related links in the right hand column in this article.

When I lived in Oregon, in my student days and salad years, I got to know a large community of lesbian women. Great people. They took me in as a friend and a member of the family, and kidded me that I was one of their “token straight friends” at Thanksgiving.

Some of the couples broke up, some no doubt have stayed together. I wonder how they’re all doing… I hope they’re all happy. The issue of gay marriage has a lot of human faces for me; the faces of long-lost friends.