This morning, in a 5-4 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned DOMA, the law barring federal recognition of same-sex marriage. 

A group of same-sex marriage supporters gathered at RU12? Community Center in Burlington to follow the proceedings. The two Supreme Court marriage decisions — one on DOMA, the other on California's Proposition 8 — were expected shortly after 10 a.m. The group at RU12? had set up two laptops on a conference table to follow along on NBC News and SCOTUSblog's live blog.

RU12? volunteer Susanna Weller (foreground, right), who works for the Vermont Department of Health, organized the gathering. "I couldn't sit by myself in my office and be 'working,'" she said. "I needed to be with my community."

The group of nine supporters and five reporters bantered nervously until 10:01, when Weller read aloud from SCOTUS blog, announcing the first opinion: "It's DOMA," she said. The room went silent.

When it became clear that the court had overturned DOMA, the audience cheered and cried. The nuances of the decision weren't immediately apparent, and it was still uncertain at that point how the court would rule on Proposition 8, but the audience was jubilant.

Barb Dozetos, a marketing consultant who once edited Vermont's now-defunct GLBT newspaper Out in the Mountains (pictured, talking with Kristin Carlson of WCAX), told reporters that the decision signaled that there was only one "flavor" of marriage. "Marriage is marriage, period," she said. "It basically finally takes the word 'gay' out from in front of marriage. That's what this means."

Find the latest on the rulings on SCOTUSblog here.

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As the Senate Judiciary Committee wrapped up its weeks-long debate over comprehensive immigration reform late Tuesday, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) did a rare and remarkable thing: He forced four Democrats who generally support gay rights to publicly acknowledge they would vote against a controversial gay rights measure.

In the backslapping world of the U.S. Senate, in which members of the same party typically look out for one another's political interests, that ain't how it usually works.

"It's courageous," former Massachusetts congressman Barney Frank tells Seven Days. "The hardest thing to do is to have to break with some of your friends."

The issue at hand, as we touched on briefly in this week's Fair Game, was a pair of amendments Leahy authored that would extend to gay Americans the right to request green cards for their foreign-born partners.

Leahy's been pushing the idea for a decade — first as a stand-alone bill called the "Uniting American Families Act." When its provisions weren't included in the comprehensive immigration bill drafted by the bipartisan "Gang of Eight," Leahy filed two amendments to the bill that would accomplish the same.

But the pushback from Senate Republicans was fierce — and even Democratic members of the Gang of Eight warned that if offered and accepted, Leahy's amendments could topple the delicate balance of immigration reform yet again. Those Democrats were so nervous Leahy would force a vote on the matter, they asked the White House to intervene — which it did Tuesday, according to the Associated Press.

"The real question was, 'Will Leahy buck the pressure and offer this?' Not even will he call for a vote, but will he offer it?" says Heather Cronk, co-director of the LGBT social justice group GetEqual, who attended Tuesday's mark-up.

Sure enough, after dispensing with nearly 300 other amendments to the immigration bill, the Judiciary Committee chairman called up one last amendment late Tuesday: his own.

"I don't want to be the senator who asks Americans to choose between the love of their life and the love of their country," Leahy said. "Discriminating against a segment of Americans because of who they love is a travesty and is ripping many American families apart."

Then, without indicating whether he would force a vote on it, the senator from Vermont said, "I know this issue is important to many who serve on this committee. Before I speak further, I'd like to hear from other members — especially from those who drafted this bill — who, for whatever reason, decided not to remove discrimination from our current immigration system in their legislative proposal."

Translation: If you're against this, speak up now and explain yourself. I won't let you quietly dodge the issue.

Four Democrats did.

The Vermont inn that made headlines for refusing to host a same-sex wedding reception is campaigning for a new title: The Wildflower Inn in Lyndonville is vying for the "readers' choice" award for favorite New England family resort on About.com. And so far it's winning: As of today, it's 14 points ahead of the other four nominees in the polls. 

Asked whether the inn's family-friendly reputation extends to same-sex families, owner Jim O'Reilly says, "Oh, absolutely. The thing that came out about the wedding thing has nothing to do with our families that visit with us, whether they’re same-sex or heterosexual. We treat them all, everybody, the same."

"The wedding thing" refers to the lawsuit that lesbian couple Ming and Kate Linsley brought against the Wildflower Inn after the owners refused, in 2010, to host the couple's same-sex wedding reception. The lawsuit resulted in a settlement last August in which the Wildflower Inn agreed to pay the Vermont Human Rights Commission a $10,000 civil penalty and donate $20,000 to the American Civil Liberties Union, which represented the couple a charitable trust established by the couple.

The inn's owners also said they would no longer host weddings or receptions at the Lyndonville getaway. 

The owners, Jim and Mary O'Reilly, cropped up again in the news a few weeks later: They appeared in a television ad in Maine opposing same-sex marriage. The Portland Press Herald called the ad "misleading" and "mostly false", because the innkeepers were sued for breaking a 1992 antidiscrimination law, not Vermont's 2009 same-sex marriage law.