Recent challenges to gay marriage bans in the South has highlighted the region as the next battleground for same-sex couples, NBC News reported. Late Thursday, a federal judge ruled that Virginia's gay marriage ban is unconstitutional. In Alabama, a man has challenged his state's prohibitions on same-sex unions -- while judges in Kentucky, Louisiana and Texas are also determining the legality of similar bans. A Gallup poll released in July 2013 reported that 43 percent of people in the South would vote to allow gay marriages nationwide, while 51 percent would oppose it. A representative of Lambda Legal, which is litigating against marriage bans in Virginia and West Virginia, said the South is “really the next frontier” in the struggle for gay marriage.
