BIRMINGHAM, England -- Two former Birmingham students have defied death threats to make legal history by becoming the first Muslim lesbian couple to get married in a civil ceremony in the UK.

Rehana Kausar, 34, and Sobia Kamar, 29, from Pakistan, tied the knot at a registration office in front of their solicitors and two Pakistani friends earlier this month.

The couple then immediately applied for political asylum in the UK claiming that their lives would be in danger if they were to return to their native Pakistan.

So many things have changed for Richard Blanco since he was named the 2013 presidential inauguration poet.

Even poetry has changed for the Cuban-American.

Blanco, 45, found that his selection as the poet for President Barack Obama’s inauguration ceremony catapulted him onto a bigger stage. Not just on that day, but since then.

So Blanco is blending his art with activism, and availing himself of speaking engagements to heighten awareness about, and lend support to, issues that are special to him – like same-sex marriage and immigration reform.

A new Gallup poll shows that Americans have become far more tolerant of gay and lesbian relations. The poll, which measures tolerance of a series of moral behaviors, shows a 19% increase in the acceptance of gay and lesbian relations since 2001, to the current level of 59%. While this change correlates with the huge increase in the number of states across the country allowing gay marriage, the data shows high regional differences, suggesting that more socially conservative states are unlikely to see changes any time soon.

Welcome to the gay rights battleground of Virginia.

Yes, you read that right. In the 2013 off-year elections, a state that once leaned solidly to the center-right has become the newest focal point in the national debate over same-sex relationships. A gubernatorial race already defined partly along culture-war lines has grown even more contentious since last weekend, when Virginia Republicans nominated as their lieutenant governor candidate a firebrand minister who has called gays “very sick people psychologically” and suggested a connection between homosexuality and pedophilia.