Great news out of California this week! Proposition 8, the voter-approved ban on same sex marriage in California, was ruled unconstitutional by a federal appeals court on Tuesday.

Prop 8 has been very controversial since 2008, when it was narrowly passed by a vote of 52 percent to 48 percent. You probably remember the Yes on Prop 8/No on Prop 8 campaigns. Even though the law only affected California, people from around the country got involved with the issue. And even though countless celebrities and big companies like Google threw their weight behind the No on Prop 8 campaign, it still managed to pass.

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Growing up in Los Angeles, I frequently heard mixed opinions about gay marriage. While LA is fairly liberal, I have, too many times, witnessed homophobic responses to two men holding hands on the street or out on a date. Truthfully, for a long time I tried to avoid having an opinion about gay marriage because I was always hearing mixed messages and both sides seemed convincing. “It goes against the bible. Your religion.” Or, “everyone has the right to marry the one they love.”  I struggled with my opinion for quite a while.

However, especially since going to college, I have been able to form my own opinion free from those around me. Out Magazine recently did an adorable photo shoot spread with Neil Patrick Harris and his “better half,” David Burtka. The article describes the men’s relationship in a way that only fortifies my belief that all people should be able to get married, regardless of sexual orientation. Part of this article is an argument against the belief that two gay men can’t have a family because they can’t reproduce. They are not any different than two parents of opposite sexes. This article also argues against the belief that gay marriage destroys the sanctity of marriage. To be honest, it seems to me that Neil Patrick Harris and David Burtka’s relationship may be more stable than most heterosexual relationships I see around me.

Ashley is a freshman at George Washington University and she’s majoring in Overanalyzing Situations and International Affairs. Follow her on twitter @ashleybrooks25.

The American Civil Liberties Union has issued a letter to superintendents in Utah informing them it is unconstitutional to ban same-sex couples from attending school events.

A female high school student was asked to leave a school dance because she brought a girl as a date. Equality Utah instructed the student to contact the ACLU. Based on previous court precedence under the First Amendment banning a same-sex couple is a violation of equal rights.

Allowing high schools students to bring same-sex dates to school dances has been a highly contentious issue over the last few years. Last week the first lesbian homecoming king and queen couple in the US  received hate mail after receiving national media coverage for their titles. One step forward, one leap back. Read More »

There were so many things this week I could have written about. Anti-choice groups are increasing efforts to make accessing abortions more difficult without being illegal. A Senegalese organization is getting villages to agree to stop the practice of female genital mutilation.  But when I read about an elderly lesbian couple that staged a sit-in after being denied a marriage license in North Carolina, my topic was picked.

Coming across the We Do Campaign video, in which non-heterosexual couples go to apply for marriage licenses in North Carolina, a state in which gay marriage has not been legalized broke my heart. Writing about the divide in belief about same-sex marriage last week, brought up the point that there in some parts of the United States there isn’t a lot of support for legalization. Currently NC is waiting until May to vote on a proposed constitutional amendment that could ban both gay marriages and civil unions. Read More »

Yonge & Dundas Intersection in Toronto after Team Canada Win

This week’s Weekly Ten, Why Canada Deserves Silver, stirred up quite the controversy yesterday. Seriously, I didn’t see this much hate on CollegeCandy since one writer expressed her disdain for Taylor Swift. And rightfully so. Yes it was meant to be a joke, but we in Canada aren’t entirely laughing with you.  While we know for a fact CollegeCandy loves their Canadian readers, and even has a few Canadian writers (myself included), this post pissed a lot of people off.

But instead of get angry and insult the intelligence of the writer, editor or Americans in general, I decided to take the high road and just show why Canada deserves more than just a gold medal in Olympic hockey. So here is my condensed version (there are way too many reasons for one post!) of all the reasons Canada rocks that they forgot to teach you in high school. Read More »

[It's pretty obvious that the average CollegeCandy reader has some very strong opinions. Opinions that she likes to share with everyone on the site. We love a strong woman (unless she happens to be charging at us with her fists raised), so we thought we'd give her a real forum to discuss her thoughts, feelings, and perspectives. Every Friday I'll be featuring a hot topic (like plastic surgery!) and leaving it up to you, the readers, to duke it out. So, read it and get your debate on in the comments section below!]

OK, I can already feel this one’s gonna get messy, so hold on tight folks.

I admit, I’ve put off talking about gay marriage here for a while, in part because, well, I went to a liberal arts school in NYC – I have way too many gay friends to really be impartial here. Then last week, the assistant managing editor of the Notre Dame student newspaper resigned during the controversy over an anti-gay joke that appeared in the paper’s comic strip and I realized that this is an issue that still affects us all, and we need to talk about it.

Now I’m not going to get into a moral argument here – I doubt that I could change anyone’s opinions one way or another about that particular issue; my questions instead are logistical – is gay marriage inevitably going to become legal and if so, what’s the point of fighting it?

Right now, five states allow gay marriage and several other have passed bills allowing it only to have them repealed. Regardless of your moral standpoint, the legal (and yes, marriage is considered a legal institution, not a religious one in the US) arguments for gay marriage are persuasive. Now, admittedly, there’s a lot of strange and old-fashioned laws still on the books that just hang around (did you know that it’s illegal to let a donkey sleep in a bathtub in Arizona?), but that’s mostly because people forget about them. Same-sex marriage is one issue that people are fighting for and are probably going to continue to fight for, so why not just let it go? Read More »

That seems a little bit backwards, no?

As same-sex couples around the country take to the battlefields to fight for their right to marry, American TV is making a mockery of the very thing these couples are wishing for. The collective majority of Americans are against allowing a same-sex couple to enjoy the sanctity of marriage, claiming we should “protect the institution of marriage” and uphold traditional American values. Yet, a new reality show reveals America’s hypocritical nature by turning marriage into a cheap game show.

Hitched or Ditched poses the ultimate ultimatum to a rocky couple: Get married in a week or end it for good. Viewers are drawn to the drama and suspense of whether a couple will say “I do” or be publicly humiliated with rejection. This all or nothing, sh*t-or-get-off-the-pot attitude cheapens the idea of marriage. This show will only reinforce our generation’s cynical attitude that marriages and weddings are nothing more than expensive circuses built around an attention-whoring couple. Something akin to the Speidi extravaganza comes to mind. Read More »

Ok, so a lot of you didn’t like us ripping into California yesterday – we get it. And we’re sorry for being mean and rude and stereotypical, but we were just. so. angry. This whole Prop 8 thing has us really heated up – we can’t sleep, we can’t work, and we can’t stop drowning our anger and tears in whatever food happens to be in our sights (yes, that includes a near frozen waffle).

We are just baffled by some people’s blatant disrespect for others, not to mention their need to control something that has nothing to do with them. We really feel that sexuality is fluid, that anyone (yup, even you) could one day find yourself in love with someone of the same sex…and that there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.

Because this topic is so near and dear to our hearts right now – and since we don’t have the money to fly out to California and beat those idiots into submission – we thought we’d have a chat with our boys about sexuality. Granted, our boy doesn’t speak for all boys (especially on this topic), but he is always so insightful. And he was the only one awake this morning at 4am when we couldn’t sleep and needed someone to vent to while we shoveled pudding into our mouths to heal our battered hearts… Read More »

So, we all know who Carrie Prejean is.
And I’m pretty sure we’re all sick of her.

But just in case you weren’t completely and utterly tired of Miss California (yes, she is still Miss CA) and her shenanigans, we came up with 5 new ideas for her to try to keep herself in the limelight for just a liiittle bit longer. If none of these work, perhaps bunking up with Spencer Pratt would help. We can’t seem to get rid of him no matter how hard we try.

1) Create her own line of Prejean Panties (bras not included). Evidently, Prejean think bras, or any tops, are overrated. At least, she likes posing without them. While Prejean said herself, “I am not perfect,” we imagine she will soon follow that up with, “But I can make your butt look that way!”

2) Start her own blingin’ jewelry line on QVC. She obviously doesn’t have enough shiny, glittery, oversized, tacky ice already. So why not start her own line? If she makes those hoops just a little bit longer, they may even cover her exposed chest! Read More »