It must also form alliances with other organizations, such as civil rights and gay rights groups, that have indicated they are willing to enter into a broader coalition to support this cause.
It was Lewis who called Lawrence and persuaded him to speak to a gay-civil-rights veteran he had alerted.
By doing so, the two were promised relative personal privacy, and given a chance to become a part of gay-civil-rights history.
Mr Obama has previously backed gay rights and civil unions but has stopped short of supporting marriage.
BBC: North Carolina approves constitutional ban on gay union
Emmer was known as a social conservative who opposed civil rights for gay and lesbian people and opposed immigration reform.
Civil rights and gay rights organizations hailed the decision.
In Costa Rica, however, gay rights activists and some deputies have backed a proposed bill to guarantee civil rights.
Obama has had an evolving position on gay rights, once supporting only civil unions.
To fight for an America defined by deep and meaningful equality -- from civil rights to labor rights, from women's rights to gay rights, from ending discrimination to promoting unionization to providing help for the most important job there is: caring for our families.
Gay rights advocates in Argentina later argued that civil unions, allowed in a several states, were a positive step that conferred some benefits to same-sex couples, but didn't go far enough.
In particularly pointed references, the president made a forceful call for gay rights that equated the issue with the struggle for women's rights in the 19th century and civil rights in the 1960s.
CNN: Obama's speech ties current issues to founding principles
Civil partnerships gave gay partners the same tax and inheritance rights as heterosexual married couples.
Advocates had expected that Colorado would become the first state that has banned gay marriage to pass a bill allowing civil unions, which grant certain legal rights to same-sex couples.
New Jersey's legislature passed a bill recognising civil unions between gay couples, which gives same-sex partners the same rights and benefits as married people in the state.
Known in France as the PACS (pacte civil de solidarite), the civil union agreement can be entered into by gay or straight couples and confers many but not all of the rights of marriage.
He dismisses the idea that gay couples could be granted rights equal to marriage under the rubric of something other than marriage, such as a civil union.
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