William Saki is celebrating his new “GAY” license plate after suing Ohio’s Bureau of Motor Vehicles for initially rejecting his request. Saki, who lives in the LGBTQ-friendly Cleveland suburb of Lakewood, argued the plate simply reflected his identity as a gay man and should be protected as free speech.
When Saki previously entered “GAY” into the BMV’s online registration tool, it rejected the request as “Inappropriate/Invalid.” The term had been on a list of nearly 62,000 prohibited plate words since 1996.
Among those terms: “QUEER”, “HOMO,” and even “LESBIAN.”
Meanwhile, the tool approved plates expressing anti-gay animus or heterosexual pride, including “NO GAYS,” “NO HOMOS,” “NO FAGS,” “STR8,” “BE STR8,” and “STR8 PWR.”
“Gay is who I am — It’s a fact and I’m proud of that,” Saki told Cleveland ABC affiliate WEWS-TV after obtaining the plate. “To know the state was saying, ‘No, we don’t like that plate. It’s offensive to us.’ That’s my free speech they’re messing with at that point.”
Saki hired First Amendment attorney Brian Bardwell, who argued the BMV’s guidelines were inconsistent — and not just for LGBTQ-themed plates.
“The guidelines were very squishy I think we could say,” Bardwell told WEWS, pointing to unrelated inconsistencies as evidence the system lacked clear standards. “Somebody wanted Jack Daniels abbreviated and they allowed that but they wouldn’t allow Jim Beam. Somebody wanted Zinfandel and that’s fine but you couldn’t have Cabernet.”
Along with Cyrus Mahdavi, another Ohioan who had sought a plate reading “MUSLIM” to express his religious beliefs, Saki argued that the BMV’s guidelines for license plate criteria were biased and infringed on his freedom of speech.
On September 11, U.S. District Judge Dan Aaron Polster dismissed the case in favor of Saki and Mahdavi after the BMV acknowledged it had wrongly rejected certain plate requests. Under the settlement, the agency agreed to review its database, remove improperly banned terms, and create a process for people to challenge previous rejections.
Customized plates are a simple way for people to express identity or belief, Saki told WEWS. “The government can’t take away free speech,” he said. “I want [others] to know if they want a crazy license plate that isn’t offensive to anyone, then they should be able to go and request that plate if no one already has that.”
Saki, who received the plate this fall, told WEWS he’s proud to display it, even if some may find the message offensive or confrontational.
“I notice people pointing and taking photos when I drive by — it puts a smile on my face, I like it,” Saki said. “I’ll always remember this plate.”
Authorities in Indonesia arrested 34 men in Surabaya, the country’s second-largest city, later parading them in public to shame them for allegedly hosting a gay sex party at a local hotel.
According to local reports, residents had alerted police to “unusual activity” on one floor of the Midtown Hotel, located in the Ngagel area of Surabaya’s Wonokromo district. Acting on the tip, officers raided the hotel at 11 p.m. on Saturday, October 18, detaining the men in the early hours of Sunday.
The men were taken to Surabaya Police Headquarters for questioning. Officers said they seized evidence during the raid, including contraceptives, mobile phones, and other electronic devices.
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito hinted in recent remarks that the court is unlikely to overturn its 2015 decision legalizing same-sex marriage nationwide -- even though he personally disagrees with it.
Part of the court’s six-member conservative majority, Alito made the remarks on October 3 during an academic conference hosted by the C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School.
In his speech, Alito referenced the Obergefell marriage equality decision while praising what he called the "bright future" of constitutional originalism -- the idea that the Constitution should be interpreted as the founders intended when they wrote it in 1787.
In a historic but under-the-radar move, South Korea's Ministry of Data and Statistics has updated its digital registration system for the 2025 Population and Housing Census to recognize "spouse" or "cohabitating partner" as valid responses for same-sex households.
The change fixes a long-standing issue from previous censuses, when same-sex partners who selected "spouse" saw their answers flagged as errors -- forcing them to instead list themselves as "other cohabitants," according to Time magazine.
The system's failure to accept "spouse" from same-sex couples effectively erased them from the data, rendering LGBTQ households invisible to government agencies and civic organizations that rely on census information to allocate resources and funding.
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