Federal judge Vaughn Walker ruled that California's Proposition 8, which sought to ban gay marriage, violates the equal protection clause of the Constitution. “Moral disapproval alone is an improper basis on which to deny rights to gay men and lesbians,” the judge said in his opinion. “The evidence shows that, by every available metric, opposite-sex couples are not better than their same-sex counterparts.” Conservative groups opposed to the ruling claimed Walker’s own sexual orientation influenced his decision. “Here we have an openly gay federal judge,” explained chairwoman of The National Organization for Marriage, Maggie Gallagher, “substituting his views for those of the American people and of our Founding Fathers who, I promise you, would be shocked by courts that imagine they have the right to put gay marriage in our Constitution.” “I feel,” said one protestor of the ruling, “like I don't live in America.”

Mexico's Supreme Court upheld a Mexico City law allowing gay people to marry, the mayor of Reykjavík marched in drag in the city's gay pride parade, and a group of men in Sudan were publicly flogged for dancing in a “womanly fashion.”  A veterinarian in San Bernardino, California, performed sex reassignment surgery on a hermaphroditic Pomeranian, and the Milwaukee teachers union demanded that its health insurance cover Viagra, alleging that failing to do so discriminates against male employees. 

A piece of ice measuring 100 square miles broke off of Greenland, and wildfires burned across Russia, while world leaders met in Bonn, Germany, to continue the climate change talks that stalled last winter in Copenhagen, but again failed to produce a binding resolution. “It's like a flashback,” said one environmental activist. “At this point,” said U.S. delegate Jonathan Pershing, “I am very concerned.”

Dermatologists at the University of Edinburgh reported that the genuine allover tan was an impossibility. 

A woman in Atlanta used her toes to type for help after burglars left her tied up in her home, and a man in Michigan discovered he had Type 2 Diabetes after his dog bit off his big toe while he was passed out drunk. “He ate it,” said the man. “I mean, he must have eaten it, because we couldn't find it anywhere else in the house.”