Another mix of good and bad news from the states, as the Arkansas Supreme Court overturns Act 1, the 2008-passed ban on same-sex adoption, and civil unions advance in Delaware.

- ARKANSAS: In a unanimous decision, the state Supreme Court ruled that the state’s ban on same-sex adoption, passed by referendum in 2008, is unconstitutional. The decision relied primarily on citizens’ right to privacy. Proponents of the ban have called the decision “anti-child.”

- CONNECTICUT: Earlier this week, the legislature’s Judiciary Committee advanced a bill that would prohibit discrimination based on gender identity and expression.

- DELAWARE: The state Senate passed a bill offering civil unions for same-sex couples. The measure is also expected to pass the House before the end of next week, despite robo calls from opponents of the measure.

- MARYLAND: The Senate’s Judicial Proceedings Committee held hearings yesterday on a bill that would end transgender discrimination, but has not yet voted to advance it to the full Senate, where the Senate President has promised to expedite it.

- MONTANA: State Rep. Ken Peterson (R) helped block a measure that would have scrubbed the state’s unconstitutional sodomy laws from the books, insisting “homosexual acts” should still be prosecuted so that “homosexuals can’t go out into the heterosexual community and try to recruit people or try to enlist them in homosexual acts.”

- NORTH CAROLINA: The House of Representatives has introduced a constitutional amendment that would ban same-sex marriage.

- TENNESSEE: The state legislature moved swiftly to advance a bill blocking cities from protecting LGBT people from discrimination, after Nashville approved such a measure earlier this week. The Family Action Council of Tennessee continues to push its “bathroom predator” video.

Keep track of how LGBT issues are advancing in the states at our State LGBT Watch.

Louis Marinelli

Last year, the National Organization For Marriage (NOM) embarked on a disastrous 23-city “Summer for Marriage Tour 2010” to spread the gospel of one-man-one-woman marriage. Throughout the tour, bus driver Louis Marinelli — who ran NOM’s Twitter account and Facebook page — denounced gay people by claiming they have “shorter life spans” and are an “abomination” to natural law.

Well today, Good As You’s Jeremy Hooper reports that Marinelli — who still retains some preconceived notions about gay people — is “coming out in full support of the civil marriage rights that gay people are seeking” and he “credits exposure to the NOM tour as the very thing that led to his change of heart”:

Whether it is an issue of disbelief, shame or embarrassment, the one thing that is for sure is that I have come to this point after several months of an internal conflict with myself. That conflict gradually tore away at me until recently when I was able to, for the first time simply admit to myself that I do in fact support civil marriage equality for all. [...]

Ironically, one of the last tour stops added to the itinerary was Atlanta and I bring this site up because it was in Atlanta that I can remember that I questioned what I was doing for the first time. The NOM showing in the heart of the Bible-belt was dismal and the hundreds of counter-protesters who showed up were nothing short of inspiring.

Even though I had been confronted by the counter-protesters throughout the marriage tour, the lesbian and gay people whom I made a profession out of opposing became real people for me almost instantly. For the first time I had empathy for them and remember asking myself what I was doing.

As Marinelli writes on his own blog: “if there is an issue of embarrassment, its roots lie in the face-to-face encounters I have had and expect to have with those with whom I once toiled over this very contentious issue.”

Indeed, public opinion polling has found a correlation between knowing gay people and being supportive of equal rights for the LGBT community. For instance, according to a CBS News Poll from last year, “77 percent of Americans now say they know someone who is gay or lesbian,” an increase of 35 percentage points since 1992. A recent ABC News/Washington Post poll also found that 53 percent of Americans now support marriage equality (up from only 32 percent support in 2004), including 53 percent of white Catholics and 57 percent of nonevangelical Protestants.

As Hooper put it in a Tweet this morning, “Today, my friends, we have more proof that exposure to our lives = @freedomtomarry.”

Yesterday, the Maryland Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee held a public hearing on the Gender Identity Anti-Discrimination Act (H.B. 235), which would “prohibit discrimination against transgender Marylanders in employment, housing and credit.” The measure passed the House of Delegates 86-52 last month and was recently revived in the Senate. A final vote could occur as early as this afternoon.

Opposition to the bill was divided, with some in the transgender community speaking out against the measure for not providing protections for public accommodations, while others contested that the bill would endanger Maryland’s children. Below is a compilation of the most offensive remarks:

- “My brother dressed up as a woman for Halloween… but he never became a homosexual. But if he became a homosexual, he couldn’t even be in our family, transgender, whatever.”

- “You’re looking at transgender teachers and you’re looking at an agenda that is rolling out into the school systems that seeks to affirm transgenderism as normal and positive. Children will be encouraged to cross dress.”

- “Children will then have to defend their birth femininity, or masculinity and they will be discriminated against if they attempt to be the boy or the girl they were born to be.”

- “If you vote yes on this bill, it will be abundantly clear to everyone of your constituents, that you do not care about the children of Maryland and you do not care about the children — our youngest most vulnerable and defenseless citizens who also have rights.”

Listen to a compilation:

A slate of recent studies have found that hate filled rhetoric contributes to a stigma that affects the health of the LGBT community. A 2010 study by the Movement Advancement Project already confirmed that LGBT elders have higher rates of poverty, homelessness, and depression due to the inequities of marriage inequality, sexism, and a lifetime of stigma. Transgender individuals experience “Injustice at Every Turn,” facing high rates of poverty, unemployment, housing discrimination, homelessness, discrimination in healthcare, harassment by law enforcement, and attempting suicide at 25 times the rate of the general population. Meanwhile, data from a survey conducted by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and the National Center for Transgender Equality has concluded that 97 percent of transgendered individuals report being mistreated or harassed at work and 47 percent lost their jobs or were denied a promotion or denied a job as a direct result of being a transgender individual.

As Delegate Joseline A. Pena-Melnyk (D), the lead sponsor of the legislation, concluded, “what you heard today from the opponents is the reason we need this bill.”