Addressing a college student convention in Concord, New Hampshire moments ago, Rick Santorum was put on the defensive by numerous members of the audience who pressed him about his opposition to marriage equality. Santorum tried engaging in a Socratic dialogue on gay marriage, parrying the student’s responses with nonsensical theoretical tangents.

“So if you’re not happy unless you’re married to five other people, is that OK?” Santorum asked one student. “Reason says that if you think it’s okay for two [individuals to marry], then you have to differentiate for me why it’s not okay for three,” he argued later. Watch a compilation:

To be clear, Santorum’s offensive and circuitous responses are all meant to reject the natural desire of two same-sex individuals to join in a union and enjoy the same rights as heterosexual couples.

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said he didn’t know President Obama’s position on the GOP’s effort to repeal New Hampshire’s 2009 marriage equality law, during a press briefing this afternoon. “I haven’t spoken to him about that state issue, so I would have to take the question to see if I could get anything back to you,” Carney told the Washington Blade’s Chris Johnson. Watch it:

Rick Perry, Mitt Romney, and Rick Santorum are all on record as supporting the repeal effort, despite significant public support for marriage equality in the state. Obama, who is still evolving on marriage equality, has previously shied away from weighing in on state issues, but did promise to “work hard to oppose” efforts to “enshrine discrimination into state laws and constitutions” during an address to the Human Rights Campaign in October. The state legislature is expected to take up the measure this month.

Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire (D) has been lauded for her announcement yesterday supporting full marriage equality, but her opponents have fired off numerous red herrings and objections to her change of heart. Sen. Dan Swecker (R) led the spin, suggesting that Gregoire’s support will interfere with budget negotiations and it’s “bad timing and a bad idea“:

SWECKER: It will be a very divisive issue. She’s just kind of fanning the flames… It will be very much a part of the mix.

Attorney General Rob McKenna, the leading Republican vying to fill Gregoire’s position after her term is over, opposes same-sex marriage and thinks the right should be offered up to a popular vote:

“He does not support gay marriage as a matter of faith,” campaign spokesman Randy Pepples said. McKenna has not seen a draft of the bill Gregoire will back, but thinks if the law does change, it should go before the voters, not be handled solely by the Legislature.

Longtime gay rights opponent Ken Hutcherson, pastor of the Antioch Bible Church in Redmond, WA, declared his intent to fight equality “like it’s the last thing I can do,” fear mongering untold consequences:

HUTCHERSON: It’s going to infringe upon my freedom of religion. Every place this has become the law of the land, you are muzzled about what you can say about the issue of homosexuality… This is the year they think they have to do it in this state or they’re not going to get it. Just as hard as they’re fighting to get it, I’m going to fight for them not to get it because it’s going to have repercussions in this state and in the U.S. that you and I are going to regret over the years.

Not to be left out, the National Organization for Marriage’s Brian Brown — absurdly boasting his organization has 800,000 members — committed to lobbying against the effort:

BROWN: The people of this country believe that marriage is a union of a man and a woman. I expect the legislature in Washington state will stand up for this commitment and vote to protect marriage.

Except, of course, that Brown couldn’t be more wrong about what the people of this country believe. A majority of U.S. voters consistently support marriage equality, and more importantly, 55 percent of Washington state voters would uphold a Legislature-approved same-sex marriage law.

Larger anti-equality organizations like the Family Research Council and the American Family Association have yet to react to Gregoire’s announcement. Perhaps they simply do not wish to draw more attention to her impassioned conversion to equality proponent.

Minnesotans United for All Families — a coalition opposing the state’s proposed anti-gay constitutional amendment to define marriage as a union between one man and one woman — has discovered that proponents of inequality are having a hard time finding Minnesotans who oppose same-sex marriage. Yesterday, the anti-gay group released its first video of 2012, but rather than interviewing actual residents of the state, the commercial is “full of stock images“:

We tracked down the phony stock images of families that they used in their video, and we think you deserve to see the proof. Check them out:

1. Children Having Fun in Playground Together
2. Loving and Playful Family
3. Happy Bride and Groom Smiling Together
4. Happy, Smiling Family
5. A house, also found on a securities website
6. And last but not least, this couple, who are also prominently featured on a website for a hospital in India!

Watch the video:

Relying on stock images is a fairly common practice in political campaigns, but anti-gay groups who argue that the public supports their view of “traditional marriage” seem particularly drawn to fake representations of families.

An Iowa judge has ruled that if a married same-sex couple bears a child, both parents’ names belong on the birth certificate. When Heather Martin Gartner gave birth to her daughter Mackenzie in 2009, the Iowa Department of Public Health told her wife Melissa Gartner that she would have to go through the invasive and costly process of adopting Mackenzie in order to be recognized as her second legal guardian. Judge Eliza Ovrom found that the Department had erred, and that same-sex spouses were entitled to the same expectation of appearing on the birth certificate as opposite-sex couples in accordance with the Iowa Supreme Court’s ruling on marriage equality:

The Supreme Court in Varnum cited legitimacy of children born to married parents under Section 252A.3(4) as one of the benefits that was withheld from same-sex couples who could not legally be married. This is a strong indication that the Supreme Court intended married same-sex couples to have legal recognition that their children are legitimate and entitled to the support of both parents.  

The Department’s refusal to place Melissa’s name on the birth certificate frustrates the purpose of the law to recognize the legitimacy of a child born to a marriage, and to establish the parents’ obligation to support the child, as recognized in the Varnum decision.

In some ways, this decision parallels the recent “King Solomon” ruling in Florida in clarifying that both mothers in a same-sex family (even if they separate) are legally responsible for a child’s upbringing. These small legal victories demonstrate that properly recognizing same-sex couples is key to ensuring their children’s well-being.

As ThinkProgress has often reported, many binational gay couples live in constant fear of being separated by deportation because the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) prevents the federal government from recognizing their relationships. But for one San Francisco couple at least, the story has a happy ending, thanks to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA).

Pelosi personally intervened on behalf of two of her constituents, Bradford Wells and Anthony John Makk, a couple who have lived in San Francisco’s Castro District for the better part of 19 years and were married in Massachusetts in 2004:

Makk is an Australian citizen who was facing deportation after the couple was denied spousal immigration benefits under the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, which blocks federal benefits to same-sex couples.

Wednesday the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services sent the couple a letter that they have been granted a two year deferred action on deportation. Pelosi, who represents San Francisco, personally intervened on behalf of the couple to ensure that Makk could stay in the country.

“The positive resolution of Anthony’s immigration petition is a personal victory for Bradford and Anthony, and keeps this loving couple together,” Pelosi said in a statement. Pelosi told the couple about the ruling herself Wednesday.

According to Metro Weekly, Pelosi also noted the broader implications of the case: “Anthony would have faced deportation because of the discriminatory Defense of Marriage Act, even though he has lived in the United States for more than 20 years, has no criminal history, has never lived here illegally and is the primary caregiver to his husband.”

She applauded the recent efforts of the Obama administration to close many low-priority immigration deportation proceedings, including those against same-sex couples. Pelosi also pledged to fight for the full repeal of DOMA, which continues to keep many other binational gay couples in legal limbo.

Surging GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum sought to distance himself from his anti-gay record and rhetoric, just one day after coming in a close second in the Iowa caucuses. During an appearance on Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly Wednesday night, the former Pennsylvania senator said that while he does support annulling all same-sex marriages through a federal constitutional amendment outlawing marriage equality, he is has spent little time discussing social issues and has instead focused on economic matters:

O’REILLY: To rescind — rescind it after a licenses already given. That’s a big deal.

SANTORUM: The federal government would have to pass a constitutional amendment and if the Constitution says that marriage is between a man and woman, then things that are inconsistent with that would not — would be inconsistent with the Constitution so –

O’REILLY: Would you be doing that if you were elected president? Would you be campaigning for a constitutional amendment in that way?

SANTORUM: I would — well, if you pass a constitutional amendment that says marriage –

O’REILLY: So would you — would that be — would that be in the forefront of your — of your administration?

SANTORUM: As you know, Bill, if you’ve been following me out on the trail, I haven’t been talking a lot about this. Although I strongly believe in it. What I’ve been talking about as I did last night on my acceptance speech where didn’t talk about this issue, I talked about the importance of getting this economy going and talked about my grandfather and coming here for freedom. And this is the fundamental issue in this campaign is whether government is going to be big and obtrusive and telling people how to manage their — their lives or — and are they going to support the basic values of faith and family that allow government to be limited and allow our economy to be strong. Those are the things I talked about and did across Iowa. I’ll be talking about those things here in New Hampshire.

Watch it:

Santorum may have failed to mention LGBT issues in every one of his 350 Iowa town halls, but as ThinkProgress has chronicled, he did spend ample time arguing that gay couples “destabilize” society and comparing same-sex relationships to inanimate objects like trees, basketballs, beer, and paper towels and even tried to blame the economic crisis on gay people. As Santorum explained back in August, religious people have a constitutional right to discriminate against gays: “We have a right the Constitution of religious liberty but now the courts have created a super-right that’s above a right that’s actually in the Constitution, and that’s of sexual liberty. And I think that’s a wrong, that’s a destructive element.”

Santorum also slipped in a coded reference to marriage in his Iowa acceptance speech Tuesday night, saying, “Those are the same people that President Obama talked about who cling to their guns and their Bibles. Thank God they do. They share our values about faith and family. They understand that when the family breaks down, the economy struggles.” In de-emphasizing the issue in New Hampshire, Santorum is acknowledging that Granite State voters are less driven by social issues than economic concerns — and that’s particularly true when it comes to the state’s own marriage equality law.