Ben Garvin / The St. Paul Pioneer Press via AP

Sen. Scott Dibble, DFL-Minneapolis, left, sponsor of the gay marriage bill in the Minnesota Senate, and his partner Richard Leyva greet a large, joyous crowd as they arrive at the Minnesota State Capitol in St. Paul, Minn. on May 13, before a Minnesota Senate debate on a bill that would make Minnesota the 12th state to legalize gay marriage and the first to pass such a measure out of its Legislature.

The Minnesota Senate gave final approval on Monday to a bill that will make the state the 12th in the United States to allow same-sex couples to marry and only the second in the Midwest.

The majority Democrat state Senate voted 37-30 to approve the bill legalizing gay marriage, putting Minnesota on the verge of becoming the third state in the nation to approve same-sex nuptials in May after Rhode Island and Delaware.

The state House approved the measure last week.

Democratic Governor Mark Dayton has said he will sign the bill on Tuesday. The law would take effect August 1.

Minnesota will join Iowa as the only other Midwestern state to permit gay marriage and the first to do so through legislation. Iowa has permitted same-sex marriage since 2009 under a state Supreme Court order.

The Minnesota House had been expected to be the bigger hurdle, but representatives voted 75-59 on Thursday to approve a bill with some Republican support.

The measure has at least one Republican sponsor in the Senate.

Senator Scott Dibble, the bill's architect, has said the stronger-than-expected vote from representatives was very encouraging and urged same-sex marriage supporters to continue active lobbying for the bill right up to Monday's vote.

Hundreds of supporters and opponents of the proposal to legalize same-sex marriage demonstrated at the Capitol on Thursday. Monday's atmosphere was very similar.

The vote on Thursday was a sharp reversal for Minnesota's legislature. Two years ago, Republicans controlled both chambers and bypassed the governor to put forward a ballot measure that would have made the state's current ban on gay marriage part of the state constitution.

Minnesota voters in November rejected that measure and also voted in Democratic majorities in both the state House and Senate, setting the legislature on the path toward Monday's vote.

Republican Senator Warren Limmer, a sponsor of the proposed amendment two years ago, has said the legislation will change how businesses work, clergy speak from the pulpit and school curriculums are shaped.

"Prior to the marriage amendment (vote) in November, many people were warning that this day would come," Limmer said in an interview last week.

Opponents of the bill have questioned whether the rights of religious groups and individuals who believe marriage should be only between one man and one woman would be protected. They also questioned the speed with which the measure was being approved.

Over several years, voters in more than two dozen states approved state constitutional provisions that define marriage as a union between a man and a woman. But in the past year, gay rights advocates won a series of victories.

In November, Maine, Maryland and Washington state became the first states to approve same-sex marriage at the ballot box.

Same-sex marriage is also legal in Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, Vermont and New Hampshire. The District of Columbia also has legalized same-sex marriage.

Illinois state senators approved a bill in February, but the measure has not been voted on in the full House. 

This story was originally published on Mon May 13, 2013 6:51 PM EDT

An Arizona woman, in despair at the re-election of Democratic President Barack Obama, ran down her husband with the family car in suburban Phoenix on Saturday because he failed to vote in the election, police said on Monday.

Holly Solomon, 28, was arrested after running over husband Daniel Solomon following a wild chase that left him pinned underneath the vehicle.

Daniel Solomon, 36, was in critical condition at a local hospital, but is expected to survive, Gilbert police spokesman Sergeant Jesse Sanger said.

Police said Daniel Solomon told them his wife became angry over his "lack of voter participation" in last Tuesday's presidential election and believed her family would face hardship as a result of Obama winning another term. 

Witnesses reported the argument broke out on Saturday morning in a parking lot and escalated. Holly Solomon then chased her husband around the lot with the car, yelling at him as he tried to hide behind a light pole, police said. He was struck after attempting to flee to a nearby street.

Obama won the national election with 332 electoral votes compared with 206 for Republican challenger Mitt Romney. Arizona's 11 electoral votes were won by Romney. 

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The chief diversity officer at Gallaudet University was put on administrative leave Wednesday after the school learned she had signed a petition supporting efforts to reverse Maryland’s same-sex marriage law, media reports say.

Dr. Angela McCaskill signed the petition at her church after her preacher spoke against gay marriage, the Planet DeafQueer blog reported on Monday, citing a Gallaudet faculty member who first spotted the administrator’s name on the document. Voters in Maryland will decide on Nov. 6 whether to keep a state law passed earlier this year approving same-sex marriage.

“I want to inform the community that I have placed Dr. Angela McCaskill on paid administrative leave effective immediately. It recently came to my attention that Dr. McCaskill has participated in a legislative initiative that some feel is inappropriate for an individual serving as Chief Diversity Officer; however, other individuals feel differently,” Gallaudet University President T. Alan Hurwitz said in a statement.

“I will use the extended time while she is on administrative leave to determine the appropriate next steps taking into consideration the duties of this position at the university. In the meantime an interim Chief Diversity Officer will be announced in the near future."

Gallaudet spokeswoman Catherine Murphy told Buzzfeed that the university did not have "a policy against political participation." When asked about the nature of the petition and if the university had any policy regarding such political participation, Murphy told NBC News in an email: “For the moment we are sticking with this (Hurwitz) statement. Please understand that in an administrative personnel matter we won't be saying anything more until we get complete clarity on what took place.”

McCaskill was the first deaf African American female to earn a Ph.D. from Gallaudet, where she has worked for 23 years in various roles, including becoming the deputy to the president and associate provost of diversity and inclusion in 2011, according to her biography on the university website. She did not respond to an email seeking comment and it was not possible to leave a phone message.

Late Wednesday, the campaign seeking to keep the same-sex marriage law urged the university to reinstate McCaskill.

"We strongly disagree with the decision to put the chief diversity officer on leave and hope she is reinstated immediately," Josh Levin, campaign manager of Marylanders for Marriage Equality, said in a statement. "Everyone is entitled to free speech and to their own opinion about Question 6 (the referendum on the ballot), which is about treating everyone fairly and equally under the law."

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Reaction to the news was mixed on the university’s Facebook page, with some wanting to give McCaskill another chance or to learn more about what happened, and others saying she shouldn’t be in the job.

Teddi Fishman, director of the International Center for Academic Integrity at Clemson University, said she would “stop short of saying that this case necessarily involves a lack of integrity.”

“If a person is responsible for ensuring equal opportunities for students regardless of their gender or sexual orientation and that person goes on record as being opposed to equal opportunities for people based on their gender and sexual orientation, it certainly appears that there is some incongruity,” she wrote NBC News in an email.

However, she noted that people also have the right to participate in the democratic process regardless of their work obligations unless they have agreed otherwise or are legally prohibited from doing so. The issue of marriage equality is not the same as the task of ensuring equality in academic settings and some could argue there were reasons -- not based on discrimination -- for opposing gay marriage, she added.

“I would feel comfortable saying, however, that if I were supervising Dr. McCaskill, I would want to talk with her to make sure that her commitment to equal opportunity to all students does indeed extend to them all and to monitor the situation more carefully than I might have done had she not signed the anti-marriage petition,” she said.

A Baltimore Sun poll in late September found that Maryland voters favored legalizing same-sex marriage, 49 percent to 39 percent. The survey of 804 likely voters was conducted from Sept. 25 to 27 by research firm OpinionWorks. The margin of error was 3.5 percentage points.

A roadside sign in Indianapolis shows the 1930 lynching of two black men. The Greater St. Mark Missionary Baptist Church is using the sign to encourage nearby residents to vote.

A pastor in Indiana has put up a sign that uses a historical image of the 1930 lynching of two black teenagers in an effort to recharge the black vote.

Rev. Joy Thornton, the senior pastor of Greater St. Mark Missionary Baptist Church in Indianapolis, said he’s concerned that African-Americans have grown complacent about voting, and he wants to urge people to exercise the right he says was hard won, the Associated Press reported.

The sign, which has stood for nearly a week along the street in front of the church, shows, on one side, a white mob gathered around the teens to watch the lynching in Marion, Ind. Atop the photo is the word “VOTE!!!” Beneath it is the question: “Is this a reason to vote?” The other side of the sign shows an image of slaves in chains, with wording beneath it that reads, “Lest we forget.”

“[The sign] is to let people know there’s been a price paid for the privilege of voting,” Thornton, a black pastor of what he describes as a multiracial congregation, told Indianapolis' WISH TV. “Oftentimes people get complacent and don’t realize that people made a sacrifice, matter of fact, the ultimate sacrifice for such a privilege.”

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But not all like to be reminded of one of the most painful chapters in the state’s history.  

Ronnie Judd, who was delivering medical supplies in the neighborhood when he saw the sign last week, said he found the sign embarrassing. Judd is white, and said he interpreted the photo to mean that if blacks don’t vote for President Obama in November, the days of lynching will return.

“We have come too far to go back to those ways,” Judd told the AP.

Mary Bishop, who works across the street from the church, said she doesn’t agree with the sign.

“It’s not a good example for him to have it like that,” Bishop told WISH TV. “He meant well, but he went about it in the wrong way.”

Thornton said the sign isn’t meant to sway voters to vote for any particular party, but rather to urge participation in November's presidential election. He said he believes some black voters have grown complacent because of President Obama's stance on same-sex marriage. 

“Regardless of who you vote for, you need to exercise your privilege, which is voting,” Thornton said.

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Joyce Hise, who also works across the street from the church, said she didn’t have a problem with the sign.

“It was just kind of a little shocker,” Hise told WISH TV. “It made me stop to think. So many people don’t know, and they don’t realize this was part of our history, and it is a reason to vote.”

Joe Slash, president of the Indianapolis Urban League, told WISH TV that he agrees with the need to urge people to vote, but he doesn’t agree with the photos used for the sign.

Thornton, however, defended the shock value of the sign.

“I don’t think it is as harsh as the fact that when we talk about African-Americans being murdered and killed at an alarming rate,” Thornton said. “It’s not as harsh as the fact we make up about 12 percent of the population and about 90 percent of the incarceration. It is not as harsh as the drugs that we are being exploited within our communities.”

Thornton, who said he’s received two complaints about the sign since it was put up, has no plans to take it down “until the Lord says so.”

Watch WISH-TV’s full report.

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David Handschuh / Pool / Getty Images file

Couple Ray Durand (L) and his partner Dale Shields kiss while having their picture taken after their wedding ceremony at the Manhattan City Clerk's office on the first day that New York State's Marriage Equality Act went into effect on July 24, 2011 in New York City.

One year after New York lawmakers voted to make same-sex marriage legal in the state, opponents of gay marriage are pledging to unseat the Republicans whose support was key to the law's passage, saying they want to send a message to other legislators that there are “consequences” to their votes.

The National Organization for Marriage, which opposes gay marriage, says it is funneling $2 million into the state to oust three state senators who voted to support the legislation. All three, Sens. Roy McDonald, Stephen Saland and Mark Grisanti, are facing primary challenges. A fourth GOP senator, Jim Alesi, already has said he won’t seek a ninth term due to local opposition over his pro-gay marriage stance.

Alesi, 64, and his three fellow GOP senators joined 29 Democrats on June 24, 2011, to give the bill a 33-29 victory. Though Alesi told msnbc.com he was sad to leave office, he said the vote on gay marriage was "irrevocable" and decried the actions of NOM as "purely revenge" and "blind hatred."

"The focal point of running against good candidates (his three fellow GOP senators) ... is nothing more than a bag of rocks that they’re carrying around and they’ll have to carry them for a long, long time because marriage isn’t going anywhere, it’s here,” he said.

Brian Brown, executive director of NOM, doesn't shy away from the fact his group is hoping to intimidate wavering lawmakers into opposing gay marriage.

“The message is clear, that supporting same-sex marriage is a losing issue, not a winning issue,” Brown told msnbc.com. “You could lose your career over supporting same-sex marriage.”

He also doesn't buy the argument that gay marriage is a settled issue in New York, even though a May 2012 poll by Quinnipac University found the state's voters support same-sex marriage 54 to 37 percent.

"If we don’t get a vote this year, we’re going to work to get one next year. We’re not going away," Brown said. "I think it’s just wishful thinking to say that once you have same-sex marriage the fight’s over. It’s not."

Toward that end, NOM has spent $400,000 on issue ads, billboards, automated calls and direct mail as well as made direct donations through its New York PAC. It is planning to spend another $1.6 million to try to unseat McDonald, Saland and Grisanti as a result of their gay marriage votes.

Both McDonald and Saland face opponents strongly opposed to gay marriage, and their contests could turn on the issue. Grisanti also has faced criticism for his marriage vote, but his Republican opponent, Kevin Stocker, won't say where he stands on the issue. Instead, Stocker argues the issue should have been put before voters, not enacted by the legislature, according to capitoltonight.com's "State of Politics" blog.

“NOM is trying to use the choke point of a Republican primary to punish people who voted … the other way,” said Bruce Gyory, a political consultant in New York who supports gay marriage but did not work on the issue for either side. “NOM’s strategy is to try to take advantage of the more conservative factor …  that exists in Republican primaries and use that as an example to say to legislators in other states, ‘Don’t you dare vote for this because you’ll lose.'"

But Gyory, an adjunct professor of political science at Albany-SUNY, believes that if the New York lawmakers can escape their primaries, their support for gay marriage could work to their advantage.

Mike Groll / AP

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, center, hands pens to legislators after signing into law a bill legalizing same-sex marriage, at the Capitol in Albany, N.Y., on Friday, June 24, 2011. Behind Cuomo, from left, are Assemblyman Matthew Titone, Assemblyman Daniel O'Donnell, Lt. Gov. Robert Duffy, Sen. Thomas Duane and Sen. Jim Alesi.

"If you put it up to a general election test in these areas it would probably play to the benefit of these legislators rather than to their political detriment.”

Alesi said NOM and the money it is pouring into the state was not a factor in his decision not to seek re-election. He said they were “nowhere on the radar” in Rochester except for a billboard they put up in a remote part of his district. He also denied that a controversial local lawsuit over a personal injury factored into his decision. What it came down to, Alesi said, is that he had a strong Republican challenger, and had determined a bloody primary wouldn’t be worth ultimately losing a Republican-held seat to a Democrat.

“As much as I could easily have won in the general election, I thought it would be very difficult to get through a primary … where I’d have to challenge my own party,” Alesi said.

He said some of his supporters encouraged him to leave the Republican Party so his marriage vote wouldn't be such a factor, but he didn't want to do it.

Hans Pennink / AP file

Sen. Roy J. McDonald, R- Stillwater, left, talks with his Chief of Staff Patrick E. Poleto during a session of the New York State Senate at the Capitol in Albany, N.Y., Tuesday, June 14, 2011.

“I thought also that it was very important if I were going to run for re-election that I would do it as a Republican because I was a Republican when I voted for marriage equality, and at the time, I said that I think it’s important for other legislatures and other states to know that Republicans can vote for things like marriage equality," he said, noting that he had said from early on, "Republicans can vote for this and go on with their political lives.”

To that end, The New York Times reported that billionaire hedge fund manager Paul Singer will give $1 million to begin a “super PAC” called American Unity PAC with several other Republicans. It will provide support to Republican candidates who favor same-sex marriage. Singer helped amass some $250,000 for each of the Republican New York state senators after NOM announced its efforts.

The New York primaries are in June and in September, and it remains to be seen how the three lawmakers will fare. But Alesi said he is fine with how everything turned out after his marriage vote, even though it is largely responsible for the end of his senate career

"I took the greatest vote I could have taken ... I firmly and truly believe in equality," he said, remembering that at the time of the vote he told himself, "If this is what the price is, it’s fine with me, because I can’t imagine having the opportunity to do anything this historic and this personally fulfilling again ever in my career ... I am leaving very peacefully."