The Week: “Four same-sex couples filed suit Wednesday to overturn Montana’s ban on gay marriage. As a result, there are now only two states — North Dakota and South Dakota — that still ban gay marriage but are not facing legal challenges that would nix those laws.”

A new Gallup poll finds Americans’ support for laws recognizing same-sex marriages as legally valid has increased yet again to 55%.

A federal judge “struck down Pennsylvania’s ban on same-sex marriages, a landmark ruling that appeared to clear the way for the Commonwealth to become the latest state to legalize gay marriage,” the Philadelphia Inquirer reports.

“It was not immediately clear if Gov. Corbett, whose administration had defended the law, would appeal the decision. It has 30 days to do so.”

“Oregon’s ban on same-sex marriages was struck down Monday by U.S. District Judge Michael McShane, who ruled that the prohibition violated the federal constitutional rights of gays and lesbians,” the Oregonian reports.

“Jubilant couples who anticipated a favorable decision from the judge began the rush to officially wed at locations around the state… Oregon becomes the seventh state where a federal judge has struck down a gay marriage ban since the U.S. Supreme Court last year invalidated key sections of the federal Defense of Marriage Act.”

A federal judge ruled that Idaho’s ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional, the Huffington Post reports.

“U.S. District Magistrate Judge Candy Dale wrote in the decision that Idaho’s laws banning same-sex marriage unconstitutionally deny gay and lesbian citizens their fundamental right to marry.”

Saying Arkansas had “no rational reason” to prevent gay couples from marrying, state judge Chris Piazza struck down a 2004 voter-approved ban on same-sex marriage, The Week reports.

Said Piazza: “This is an unconstitutional attempt to narrow the definition of equality. The exclusion of a minority for no rational reason is a dangerous precedent.”

“The country’s leading gay rights groups and donors, after a decade focused on legalizing same-sex marriage, are embarking on a major drive to win more basic civil rights and workplace protections in Southern and Western states where the rapid progress of the movement has largely eluded millions of gay men and lesbians,” the New York Times reports.

“The effort will shift tens of millions of dollars in the next few years to what advocates described as the final frontier for gay rights: states like Mississippi, Georgia, Arkansas and Texas, where Republicans dominate elected office and traditional cultural views on homosexuality still prevail.”

A new American Values/Family Research Council survey of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents finds that 82% said they agree that marriage should be confined as being only between a man and a woman and that 75% “completely disagreed” that officials should be working to redefine marriage to include same-sex couples.

“A dozen states still have anti-sodomy laws on the books 10 years after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled they are unconstitutional,” the AP reports.

“Of 14 states that had anti-sodomy laws, only Montana and Virginia have repealed theirs since the Supreme Court ruling.”

Vice President Biden “really did get ahead of” President Obama “on accepting gay marriage in 2012 — and the White House really wasn’t happy about it, despite the two leaders’ many attempts to claim otherwise. That’s the story laid out in Jo Becker’s new book, Forcing the Spring, which documents the past few years of successful efforts to expand the legalization of gay marriage,” Politico reports.

However, Andrew Sullivan is not impressed with the book saying the it “descends into more jaw-dropping distortion.”

The New York Times has a must-read look at how President Obama reversed his position on same-sex marriage.

“David Plouffe, a mastermind of the 2008 victory and a senior adviser to the president, reached out to Ken Mehlman for advice. The previous year, Mehlman, a former chairman of the Republican National Committee who engineered President George W. Bush’s re-election, came out as gay and began working with the foundation Griffin set up to fund the Proposition 8 lawsuit, attracting well-known G.O.P. donors, strategists and officials to the cause. Mehlman had already met with Obama over lunch at the White House and told him that people voted for him in 2008 because they viewed him as an idealist who would put politics aside and do what was right. Endorsing same-sex marriage would remind voters that he was still that man.”

“Mehlman sent Plouffe an email suggesting that the president announce his support for same-sex marriage in a TV interview with a female host. He also laid out specific language for Obama to use. Explain that this was a family decision and not a political one, he advised.”

Wall Street Journal: “Polls show that social conservatives, who make up a large share of the party’s core supporters, remain firmly opposed to gay marriage. But in a half-dozen state legislatures controlled by the GOP, bills allowing businesses to refuse services for gay weddings are dead or on hold. In Illinois, three Republicans who voted to allow gay marriage in their state won primaries this month, despite opposition from social conservatives, preliminary results showed.”

“The developments worry some opponents of gay marriage… They also come as the GOP is debating whether its best course for building a national majority, which has eluded it in five of the past six presidential elections, is to recommit to conservative principles or to adjust its tone and stances to reach new voters.”

Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R) “said he will follow however a federal judge rules on the legality of same-sex marriages in his state, and insisted he has never taken a public position on the issue,” Politico reports.

Said Snyder: “Social issues, generally, I don’t take a position. I stay focused on jobs and kids.”

A U.S. district judge has overturned Michigan’s bans on gay marriage and same-sex adoption, the Detroit News reports.

“In his 31-page written opinion released shortly after 5 p.m. Friday, Judge Bernard Friedman said the constitutional amendment known as the Michigan Marriage Act, passed by the voters in 2004, was unconstitutional because it denied gays and lesbians equal protection under the law.”

Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway (D) explained to the Huffington Post why he refused to defend Kentucky’s gay marriage ban.

Said Conway: “I felt like that from a fiscal responsibility standpoint, I didn’t need to be wasting taxpayer resources in a lawsuit that we weren’t going to win or in an appeal that we weren’t going to win. For the sake of my daughter’s view on my public service in the future, I wanted to be on the right side of history.”

“I think the thing that is getting a little tiresome, the gay community, they have so bullied the American people, and they’ve so intimidated politicians. The politicians fear them, so that they think they get to dictate the agenda everywhere.”

— Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-MN), quoted by the Huffington Post.

Pew Research: “Today, 61% of Republicans and Republican leaners under 30 favor same-sex marriage while just 35% oppose it. By contrast, just 27% of Republicans ages 50 and older favor allowing gays and lesbians to marry.”

A new Washington Post-ABC News poll finds that 50% of Americans say the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection gives gays the right to marry, while 41% say it does not.

Beyond the constitutional questions, a record-high 59% say they support same-sex marriage, while 34% are opposed, the widest margin tracked in Post-ABC polling.

Wonk Wire has more on the poll.