Beck Diefenbach / Reuters file

Gay marriage advocates cheer during a rally outside a federal courthouse in San Francisco moments before hearing that judges had struck down Proposition 8, which bans same-sex marriage, on Feb. 7, 2012.

Backers of California's Proposition 8, intended to ban same-sex marriage in the state, asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday to take up their appeal after two lower federal courts found the measure unconstitutional.

The justices now face two gay rights issues: the Prop 8 appeal and two challenges to the federal Defense of Marriage Act.

Voters in California approved Prop 8 in 2008, less than six months after the state’s Supreme Court approved same-sex marriage. The measure was immediately challenged.

A federal judge declared it unconstitutional in 2010, and a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 in February that the ban discriminated against gays and lesbians. The full circuit declined to hear the appeal from Prop 8 supporters, though its ruling remains on hold until all legal avenues have been exhausted.

In urging the Supreme Court to hear their appeal, backers of the measure – which includes that Alliance Defending Freedom, a legal ministry -- said the nation was in the midst of a public debate about "the profoundly important question” of “whether the ancient and vital institution of marriage should be fundamentally redefined to include same-sex couples."

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Proponents of Prop 8 stepped in to lead the court battle after California officials concluded the ban was unconstitutional and declined to defend it.

The federal appeals court wrongly concluded, the Prop 8 backers said in their petition Tuesday, that because California's domestic partnership law already gave same-sex couples the same legal rights that married couples have, all the measure did was take away their legal right to get marriage licenses. 

Such a distinction, the appeals court determined, had no effect other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gays and lesbians. The court also found that Prop 8 unconstitutionally took away a fundamental right that the state had previously guaranteed.

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"This reasoning calls into immediate question the marriage laws of Hawaii, Nevada, and Oregon, which extend to same-sex couples the incidents but not the designation of marriage," lawyers for the Prop 8 supporters argued in their Supreme Court filing.

The appeals court ruling "threatens to short-circuit further democratic deliberation regarding official recognition of same-sex marriage," they said.

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Separately, both the Obama administration and House Republicans are urging the Supreme Court to decide the constitutionality of a provision in the federal Defense of Marriage Act, passed in 1996 and signed into law by former President Bill Clinton. 

DOMA, as the law is known, prevents the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriage -- even in states where it is legal -- thereby denying various benefits given to heterosexual couples. 

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The Obama administration had stopped defending the law, concluding it was unconstitutional. It recently asked the Supreme Court to take up two of the DOMA cases – one originating in Massachusetts, the other in California -- after appeals courts struck the law down.

Neither case sought for justices to decide the fundamental question of whether the Constitution guarantees same-sex couples the right to marry. No Supreme Court action on whether to take up any of the cases, or all of them, is expected until the fall.

No same-sex marriages have been performed in California since Prop 8 was passed by voters.

Equality California, a LGBT advocacy group, said there was no need for the Supreme Court to review the case because the decision to strike down Prop 8 “rested on solid constitutional principles.”

"Two federal courts in this case have affirmed what we know to be true -- that Proposition 8 seriously infringes on the guarantee of equal protection and serves no legitimate state interest,” the group’s spokeswoman, Rebekah Orr, said in an email. “We look forward to a day in the near future when all loving, committed couples will have the freedom to commit their lives to one another in marriage and enjoy the security and protection that only marriage can provide." 

NBC News’ Miranda Leitsinger contributed to this report.

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Greg Kimball and Brian O'Connor shout outside the Massachusetts State House on June 14, 2007 in Boston, Mass. On May 31, 2012, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston ruled that the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) unconstitutionally denies married same-sex couples federal benefits.

A Filipino woman who married her American wife in 2008, when it was briefly legal to do so in the state of California, should not be denied immigration rights that heterosexual couples receive and should not be deported, her lawyers are arguing in a lawsuit.

Jane DeLeon, who came to the U.S. in 1989, her son, Martin Aranas, and her spouse, Irma Rodriguez, are suing the Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, among others, for their implementation of the Defense of Marriage Act. The lawsuit was filed Thursday in U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, Western Division.

The suit joins several others targeting DOMA, the federal law banning same-sex marriages, including one filed by binational gay couples in New York. The Obama administration has asked the Supreme Court to take up two of those cases: one originating in Massachusetts and another in California, according to scotusblog.

“ … [T]the lawsuit alleges that the Administration has refused to implement a nationwide program to place same sex marriage immigration cases on hold while the courts determine DOMA’s constitutionality,” the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law, which filed the lawsuit on behalf of the family along with others, said in a statement, echoing complaints made by other same-sex marriage immigration groups.

“While the Administration has stated that it would review gay marriage cases on a ‘case-by-case’ individual basis, the plaintiffs claim that many immigrants cannot afford to retain lawyers to prepare the materials needed for an individualized discretionary case-by-case determination, and in any event many immigrants are afraid to come forward and expose themselves to detention or deportation,” the statement continued. In this case, “DeLeon was not offered a ‘case-by-case’ determination but instead had her temporary status automatically revoked and was told to leave the country.”

DeLeon, 47, came to the U.S. with her common-law husband. She met Rodriguez in 1992, and they have lived together ever since.

Authorities approved her employer’s application for permanent resident status for her in May 2006, and she had temporary lawful status until April 2011, when immigration officials told her she was inadmissible to the country. They said she had misrepresented her name and marital status because she had entered the U.S. under the last name of her former spouse, even though they were not legally married, according to the lawsuit.

The couple attempted to get a waiver based upon the hardship that deportation would impose upon them and DeLeon’s 25-year-old son, whose immigration status would also be affected if his mother was deported, but it was denied last November. Authorities, the lawsuit said, did not reject the request because the couple failed to prove the hardship claim, but solely because under the federal marriage law she was married to someone of the same sex who was not recognized as a relative.

The denial states that under DOMA, DeLeon’s spouse did "not qualify as a relative for purposes of establishing hardship,” the lawsuit said.

Peter Boogaard, a Department of Homeland Security spokesman, said immigration services won’t comment on pending litigation.

"In general, pursuant to the attorney general’s guidance, the Defense of Marriage Act remains in effect and the executive branch, including the Department of Homeland Security, will continue to enforce it unless and until Congress repeals it, or there a final judicial determination that it is unconstitutional,” he said in an email.

For some gay couples, fight goes on to marry — and stay in the US
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DOMA, enacted by Congress in 1996, blocks federal recognition of same-sex marriage, thereby denying various benefits given to heterosexual couples, such as the right to immigrate.

The lawsuit alleges that the federal marriage law denies due process and equal protection  under the law in violation of the U.S. Constitution. The couple is asking the court to grant their request to give class action status to the lawsuit since their challenge affects innumerable others in their situation.

 “Irma and I have committed to each other for the rest of our lives. We now face being forced to move to the Philippines or breaking up our family only because we are legally married women,” DeLeon said, noting the couple could face persecution in her home country because they are lesbians. “We pray that the administration will change its mind and grant me and those similarly situated around the country the right to remain here temporarily until the courts decide whether our constitutional lawsuit has merit.”

There are an estimated 36,000 binational gay couples in the U.S. Lavi Soloway, a lawyer representing same-sex couples, whose law practice – Masliah & Soloway – created Stop The Deportations: The DOMA project, said the case highlights the need to put such pending green card cases on hold until a judicial resolution has been reached.

“Thousands of gay and lesbian Americans struggle every day with the crisis of expiring visas, separation, exile, and deportation caused solely by DOMA," he said in an email. "This can end now if the Obama administration uses the power of the executive branch to implement remedies to protect our families until DOMA is gone.”

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Former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky and his attorney Joe Amendola enter the Centre County Courthouse as the second day of jury selection begins in his child sex abuse trial on June 6 in Bellefonte, Pa.

Updated at 3:30 p.m. ET: BELLEFONTE, Pa. -- Lawyers have selected 12 jurors and alternates to hear the child sex abuse case against former Penn State assistant coach Jerry Sandusky.

The seven women and five men on the main panel and four alternates were selected Tuesday and Wednesday in a central Pennsylvania courthouse, according to The Patriot-News in Harrisburg, Pa.

Sandusky faces 52 counts involving 10 alleged victims over a 15-year span. The 68-year-old Sandusky has denied the allegations.

Sandusky's attorney told jurors seven members of the former coach's family had been on his list of potential witnesses.

The jury's composition reflects the area's strong connection to Penn State. It includes a Penn State senior, a retired professor and a woman who's been a football season ticket holder since the 1970s. The woman’s husband also works for the medical group where the father of a key witness Mike McQueary previously worked.

Sandusky's attorney had moved to strike the woman as a juror, but Judge John Cleland overruled his objection.

"We're in Centre County. We're in rural Pennsylvania," Cleland said. "There are these (connections) that cannot be avoided."

Cleland said that unless ties to witnesses or Sandusky were strong, relationships such as hers would not mean she could not serve on the jury, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported.

Eighteen of 40 potential jurors told the court they are mandated by law to report suspected child abuse due to the nature of their job, according to a Patriot-News reporter following the selection process. In addition to the charges Sandusky faces, two top Penn State officials have been charged with not reporting an abuse incident brought to their attention in 2001 by then-assistant coach McQueary.

'Fair shake'
Twelve of the 40 jurors questioned Wednesday morning were excused, including one who knew Sandusky personally. Some were let go because of financial hardship; others because of previous vacation plans.

As jury selection continued, Cleland reiterated that the trial would start Monday at 9 a.m. and run until the end of June, according to PennLive.com. Cleland said he would not sequester the jury once the trial begins.

Earlier, defense lawyer Joe Amendola arrived with Sandusky just after 8:15 a.m. and said he's confident the nine jurors already picked will give "us a fair shake."

Lead prosecutor Joseph McGettigan, Pennsylvania's senior deputy attorney general, said that jury selection was "so far, so good."

Prosecutors have 'bizarre' letters Sandusky wrote to victim, source tells NBC

Jurors are being chosen from among people who live in the State College area, where Penn State's main campus is located.

"I need you to all have an open mind," Cleland told jurors on Tuesday, according to PennLive.com. "This defendant is charged with sexual abuse of children."

9 jurors chosen so far in Jerry Sandusky trial

Sandusky, 68, faces 52 criminal counts for alleged abuse of 10 boys over 15 years. Some of the accusers are expected to testify. Sandusky has repeatedly denied the charges.

On Monday, the alleged victims were told they would have to use their real names when they testified. Lawyers for five accusers had requested their clients be allowed to use pseudonyms.

Victim #4
Prosecutors have obtained multiple incriminating and “bizarre” letters that Sandusky allegedly wrote to one of his accusers, who is known as Victim #4, NBC News reported Tuesday. The letters are allegedly written in the former coach's handwriting.

According to the indictment handed up against Sandusky, the defendant met the boy -- who is now 28 -- through his Second Mile charity and slowly won his trust by giving him gifts and other rewards.

"Victim 4 became a fixture in the Sandusky household, sleeping overnight and accompanying Sandusky to charity functions and Penn State football games,” it said. Usually the persuasion Sandusky employed was accompanied by gifts and opportunities to attend sporting and charity events. He gave Victim #4 dozens of gifts, some purchased and some obtained from various sporting goods vendors such as Nike and Airwalk." 

The case has drawn intense media attention, with about two dozen television trucks parked outside the courthouse.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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A day after the state's top court found that simply viewing child pornography wasn't a crime in New York, two legislators said Wednesday that they would soon introduce a measure to make it one.

The state Court of Appeals — the equivalent of the Supreme Court in most other states — ruled Tuesday in the case of a college professor whose work computer was found to contain illegal images that "merely viewing Web images of child pornography does not, absent other proof, constitute either possession or procurement," which are illegal under state law.

Viewing child porn on the Web 'legal' in New York, state appeals court finds

"Rather, some affirmative act is required (printing, saving, downloading, etc.) to show that defendant in fact exercised dominion and control over the images that were on his screen," Senior Judge Carmen Beauchamp Ciparick wrote for a majority of four of the six judges.

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The ruling generated headlines and opposition across the country. Patrick Trueman, president of the conservative institute Morality in Media and director of the Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section of the U.S. Justice Department during the Reagan administration, called on state authorities to take over all child pornography cases "until this opinion is overturned." 

Wednesday, two lawmakers from Brooklyn — Sen. Martin Golden, a Republican, and Assemblyman Joseph Lentol, a Democrat — said they planned to introduce a bill within the next few weeks that would prohibit "knowingly accessing" child pornography "with intent to view."

"Federal regulations are already in place to see that those who access child pornography face the stricter standards of the law," Golden told Reuters on Wednesday. "New York must adopt these same policies."

The decision Tuesday didn't free the defendant. Instead, it dismissed one of the two counts of promoting a sexual performance of a child and just one of dozens of counts of possession of child pornography on which James D. Kent was convicted. The court upheld the other counts against Kent, an assistant professor of public administration at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y.

Kent — who said at his sentencing that he "abhorred" child pornography and argued that someone else at Marist must have placed the images on his computer — was sentenced to one to three years in state prison in August 2009.

The decision turned on the question of whether accessing and viewing something on the Internet is the same as possessing it. In essence, the court said "no."

The court noted that possessing or procuring child pornography is illegal, but the majority said that it was up to the Legislature, not the courts, to decide whether it's also illegal to passively view it online, without taking any other action. 

The practical effect, wrote Judge Victoria A. Graffeo — who concurred with the result but disagreed with the majority's reasoning — is that "the purposeful viewing of child pornography on the Internet is now legal in New York."

You can read the full ruling here, in .pdf form.

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Jennifer Tyrrell and her 7-year-old son have had many rewarding experiences with the Boy Scouts of America, but their participation in the national organization came to an end because she is gay, and the group does not allow open or avowed homosexuals in their membership.

Tyrrell learned the news on April 10. The loss has been devastating.

“We were like a family, so in essence … we lost our scouting family, but they also lost two members of their scouting family,” the former Tiger Cubs den leader from Bridgeport, Ohio, told msnbc.com, at points breaking down into tears.

“The best time in our lives we’ve had in the last year, it’s gone … because we can’t be scouts any more. I can’t stop crying,” she later added.

Tyrrell, a 32-year-old stay at home mother of four, said she agreed to become the den master on the day she signed up her son, Cruz Burns, for the local troop, last year. She had concerns about the Boy Scouts' policy against homosexuals, but a Cubmaster said that – locally -- they wouldn’t have problem.

“He said they would stand, you know, hand in hand with us and stand behind us all the way. Well, actually, that's been true,” she said. “I've never had a problem.”

Boy Scouts spokesman Deron Smith said Tyrrell was removed from the program for being in violation of the national policy regarding homosexuals.

“This policy was understood by her and her fellow volunteers, but not followed, upon her registering in the program,” he wrote in an email to msnbc.com.

Tyrrell said she would still be at home, crying on the couch, if her friends hadn’t encouraged her to hold a protest in town against her dismissal and start a campaign online to seek changes to the Boy Scouts policy.

Courtesy of Jennifer Tyrrell

Jennifer Tyrrell and her son Cruz Burns.

That petition has garnered more than 170,000 signatures

The Boy Scouts’ policy became a focus of the U.S. Supreme Court in 2000, when the justices sided with the organization in a lawsuit involving a former Assistant Scoutmaster who was gay, citing the protections of the First Amendment.

“Scouting, and the majority of parents it serves, does not believe it is the right forum for children to become aware of the issue of sexual orientation, or engage in discussions about being gay. Rather, such complex matters should be discussed with parents, caregivers, or spiritual advisers, at the appropriate time and in the right setting,” Smith said. “We fully understand and appreciate that not everyone will agree with any one position or policy.”

But Tyrrell said sexual orientation wasn’t a topic until her dismissal. The children just knew that Cruz had two moms, but there was no further discussion about sexuality.

She also questioned the timing of the revoking of her membership, claiming that as the recently-appointed treasurer, she was trying to iron out some financial discrepancies – and was going to formally make her queries at a meeting the day she was removed.

“She did raise question about the local unit’s finances, however her removal from the program was solely for being in violation of national policy,” Smith wrote. 

Tyrrell said she will continue to push for changes at the Boy Scouts and called on them to take “the high road” and change their policy to include “all Americans.”

“… because we’re just people,” she said. “We’re just gay people who love their kids.”

Greg Mortenson poses with Sitara "Star" schoolchildren in Wakhan, northeastern Afghanistan in this undated handout file photograph released to Reuters March 11, 2009.

A federal court is expected to hear accusations Wednesday that author and humanitarian Greg Mortenson fabricated parts of his best-selling books "Three Cups of Tea" and "Stones Into Schools." 

A hearing is scheduled in Great Falls, Montana on claims that Mortenson lied about how he came to build schools in Central Asia after losing his way in a failed mountaineering expedition and being nursed back to health in a Pakistani village. 

 The lawsuit — filed by two California residents, a Montana man and an Illinois woman who bought the books — list more than two dozen alleged fabrications and accusations of wrongdoing by Mortenson, publisher Penguin Group, co-author David Oliver Relin and the Central Asia Institute. 

The plaintiffs say Mortenson and the others purposely presented the lies as the truth to trick readers into buying the books and donating to the charity. They accuse Mortenson and the others of racketeering, fraud, deceit, breach of contract and unjust enrichment. 

A First Amendment expert calls the lawsuit absurd, regardless of whether the books contain fabrications. 

'Three Cups of Tea' author Greg Mortenson must pay $1 million to charity

Mortenson did not defame or harm anybody in his books, and barring narrow exceptions like national secrets, he can write what he wants and does not have to justify it, said Wayne Giampietro, a Chicago attorney and general counsel of the First Amendment Lawyers Association. 

"It's his story. It purports to be his experiences. He can say it any way he wants to say. He has the right to publish anything he wants about himself," Giampietro said. "The idea that you can be sued because perhaps they don't like what you wrote, for whatever reason, is absurd." 

Lawyers for Mortenson and Penguin Group plan to argue that very point before U.S. District Judge Sam Haddon. They are asking Haddon to dismiss the lawsuit, which seeks triple the amount of total books sales, plus punitive damages. The lawsuit is asking a judge to order that everybody who bought the books be refunded. Whatever money is left over would go to a humanitarian organization selected by the plaintiffs' attorneys and approved by the court 

That promises to be several million dollars. "Three Cups of Tea" alone sold about 4 million copies. 

The hearing comes less than two weeks after Mortenson and the Montana attorney general announced a $1 million agreement to settle claims that Mortenson mismanaged the Central Asia Institute and misspent its funds. The agreement removes Mortenson from any financial oversight and overhauls the charity's structure, but it did not address the contents of the books. 

That's where the civil lawsuit comes in. The four plaintiffs allege that Mortenson, Relin, Penguin, the Central Asia Institute and Mortenson's consulting group, MC Consulting, were involved in a conspiracy to promote and sell the books based on lies. 
"The enterprise's fraudulent scheme was to make Mortenson into a false hero, to sell books representing to contain true events, when they were false, to defraud millions of unsuspecting purchasers out of the purchase price of the books and to raise millions of dollars in charitable donations for CAI," their lawsuit alleges. 

The claims cite a laundry list of alleged fabrications. They include Mortenson's recollections about holding Mother Teresa's hand while her body was lying in state in 2000, when Mother Teresa actually died three years earlier. 

Those and several other alleged fabrications in the lawsuit were first brought to light last year by author Jon Krakauer and a "60 Minutes" story that questioned the truth behind Mortenson's writings and whether he was benefiting from his charity. Those reports prompted the Montana attorney general's investigation and also the civil lawsuit whose original plaintiffs dropped out months ago. 

One of the lawyers in the case is Larry Drury, who also represented plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit against James Frey, who admitted on the "Oprah Winfrey Show" that he lied in his memoir "A Million Little Pieces." 

That lawsuit ended in a settlement that offered refunds to buyers of the book. 

Drury and fellow plaintiffs' attorney Alexander Blewett say the Mortenson and Frey cases "are stunningly close." 

Mortenson and Penguin don't argue that the events in the books are true, though the publisher says that nobody can rely on the truth or accuracy of autobiographies because they are based on the authors' own recollections. 

Both Mortenson and Penguin argue that the plaintiffs can't prove that they were actually injured by anything that was written in the books and that this lawsuit amounts to a threat to free speech. 

Penguin attorney F. Matthew Ralph says that if a publisher were required to guarantee the truth and accuracy of everything an author says, the costs of publishing books would be prohibitive. 

"No standards exist for drawing the line where 'fiction' becomes 'nonfiction' or vice versa; and the courts are not a proper place for developing such standards or policing that line," Ralph wrote.

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Updated at 8:46 p.m. ET: A man who stabbed a judge and shot a sheriff's deputy in a western Washington courthouse remained at large Friday afternoon after authorities determined that a man who was taken into custody afterward wasn't the suspect.

"So far, we have not positively identified anyone" in the incident, which happened about noon local time (3 p.m. ET) at the Grays Harbor County Courthouse in Montesano, a town of 4,000 people 100 miles southwest of Seattle, Grays Harbor County Undersheriff Rick Scott told reporters, adding: "We do not have a suspect in custody."

About an hour after the attack, authorities converged with weapons drawn on a house in Montesano where they believed a suspect, whom they initially identified as Michael Thomas, was holed up. They threw a gas canister toward the house and then advanced on it.

At about the same time, the Washington State Patrol told NBC station KING-TV of Seattle that Michael Thomas had been taken into custody on unrelated charges in the city of Tumwater, about 40 miles away.

Scott told reporters that the man arrested in Tumwater wasn't the gunman, who he said remained at large. It appeared that no one was in the Montesano house, which is owned by an older couple who police said weren't believed to have been involved in the courthouse incident.

Scott said the gunman shot Grays Harbor County sheriff's Deputy Polly Davin and stabbed Superior Court Judge Dave Edwards in the neck after he tried to come to the deputy's assistance. They were treated at Grays Harbor Community Hospital and released late Friday afternoon.

The gunman escaped with the deputy's .45-caliber handgun, Scott said. He was described as a slender white man with light brown hair, 5 feet, 10 inches to 6 feet tall, wearing a blue dress shirt and black slacks and possibly carrying a black briefcase. He was last seen on foot south of the courthouse, Scott said.

Edwards joined a lawsuit last year against Grays Harbor County over budget cuts to the court system, NBC's Northwest Cable News reported.

Among the demands in the suit — which seeks to restore budget cuts and stop what it claims is interference in court operations by the county Board of Commissioners — are that the county bolster security at the courthouse.

Michelle Acevedo of NBC News and NBC station KING5 of Seattle contributed to this report by M. Alex Johnson of msnbc.com. Follow M. Alex Johnson on Twitter and Facebook.

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RICHMOND, Va. -- A suburban Richmond woman was fined $100 after admitting she faked cancer to raise money.

The Richmond Times-Dispatch said that Martha Ann Nicholas pleaded guilty on Monday to two misdemeanor charges of obtaining money by false pretenses. Besides the fine, she was ordered by a judge to not take part in any charitable causes and placed on five years' probation.

A 12-month jail sentence was suspended, the newspaper reported.

The Mechanicsville woman had claimed at rallies that she was a cancer victim.

Her attorney, Sam Simpson, said Nicholas has made restitution of $1,700, the total she had collected for herself.

Nicholas had been suffering from a psychosomatic condition that made her believe she had a cancer-like illness, Simpson said.

Her family said she is receiving counseling and told the Times-Dispatch that they were relieved she was not going to jail.

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Artist Danica Phelps stands amid panels of her work in Manhattan's Lower East Side.

When the end of a longtime relationship cost artist Danica Phelps her home, she used her creative energies to chart the troubled period in her life. The result: A work of art that incorporates an eight-page court ruling that she says pushed her down the path toward foreclosure.

Titled "The Cost of Love," the 25-panel piece weaves 350,000 tiny red-hued stripes -- in shades of cherry, burgundy, peach  and pink – together with words from the ruling, including "animosity," "eviction," "mortgage," "girlfriends," "child," "donor" and "insemination."

"This is the whole decision represented in these panels," Phelps, 40, said recently at Brennan & Griffin, the art gallery that represents her and is showing her work in Manhattan's Lower East Side neighborhood through Sunday. "I didn't want my emotion to be represented. What I wanted was to put out this word for word and to allow the viewer to have their own emotional reaction to it."

Phelps, who has used similar striping in previous pieces, said the genesis of her latest creation occurred in 2009, when her relationship with an ex-girlfriend unraveled and she decided to move out of the four-unit apartment building she owned in New York.

After moving in with relatives and unsuccessfully attempting to persuade her ex to move out of the apartment they had shared for three years, Phelps initiated eviction proceedings. 

Once a family
But on June 2, 2010, Housing Court Judge Laurie L. Lau dismissed the case. Because Phelps and her ex-girlfriend had been a “familial unit” when they moved in together and jointly parented a now 3-year-old-boy named Orion born to Phelps through artificial insemination, Lau wrote, the latter was not subject to eviction under New York City law.

"While their relationship has obviously deteriorated into one of animosity and hostility, the evidence establishes the parties had intended to form a lasting familial unit,” the judge said. “It has been held that 'lifetime partners whose relationship is long term and characterized by an emotional and financial commitment and interdependence,' ... satisfy the definition of 'family' for purposes of the Rent Stabilization Code."

Irishman makes 'billion-euro home' from old notes to protest economic 'madness'

Phelps then decided to stop paying the mortgage on the apartment building, which is now in the midst of foreclosure. A real estate agent is trying to help her arrange a short sale (an agreement between a lender, a buyer and a seller in which the lender agree to accept less than the total loan) to avoid that.

She calculates her financial loss at $350,000, hence the number of red stripes in her artwork.

John Makely / msnbc.com

Close-up shows detail of one panel of Danica Phelps' work, 'The Cost of Love.'

"I know that this show sounds like it’s about the cost of having been in that relationship, but what the meaning is to me actually is the cost of maintaining Orion's happiness and his future," she said of her son. "If I have to lose the house ... I feel like it's actually a small price to pay."

$26 a letter
To make the panels – each of which represents one paragraph of the court decision -- Phelps first counted the numbers of the letters in the text – approximately 13,000 -- and divided 350,000 by that number. That worked out to $26 a letter.

She then took large pieces of paper and drew lines according to the value of each word.

For example, a 13-letter word would be worth $338, and thus would be followed by 338 stripes. She glued words from the judge’s ruling on large pieces of paper and painted the lines around them, using a mix of watercolor and gouache – a form of watercolor with more pigmentation.

The foreclosure crisis, Beverly Hills-style

She then cut the paper into rows and glued them onto birch plywood. At the bottom of each panel is the "cost" represented and the paragraph it represents from the ruling.

Phelps, who had other artists help her with some of her earlier stripe art, said she wanted to do this one herself, even though it took her five months to finish it.

“I felt like each stripe should be painted by me,” she said with a sigh. “It's like letting go of the house, every single penny of it. And once I’ve painted it, it's gone."

She said she found the process peaceful and healing, though some viewers don’t get that sense when they view it.

"People have said, 'Oh it's so dark … all that red is so angry,'” she said. “I look in here and it's glowing to me. … I feel like I accomplished what I set out to, which is to turn something that was depressing to me into something very beautiful."

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