Big news coming this week from Rhode Island, where we may see the year’s first hearing on marriage equality. New lawmakers in Illinois and Colorado express eagerness to pass marriage and civil unions bills. Two lawsuits join forces in Hawaii and Nevada, plus one unlikely country that saw support for marriage double over the last decade.

Here we are at the end of 2012, and after a year of amazing progress we’re closer than ever to full federal marriage equality. Think about where we were a year ago with Prop 8, with DOMA, with marriage laws from state to state. So much has happened since then. So let’s do a quick year-in-review to get you caught up with the progress we made in 2012, and where we’re going to focus in 2013, including which states are the most likely to make headlines in the coming year.

More suspense from the Supreme Court, with an announcement in the Prop. 8 case pushed back to Friday at the earliest. Meanwhile, a setback in a Nevada lawsuit, but now the case goes to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. That court previously ruled in favor of marriage equality in the Prop. 8 case. And with a string of losses and plummeting poll numbers, anti-gay groups are quickly running out of donors.