A Southern California school has advised a same-sex couple who have children in the facility to not appear together at school functions, 365Gay.com reported. St. John the Baptist School, in Costa Mesa, has adopted a new policy that calls for parents to display 'appropriate conduct, in order to support the school's mission and provide positive role models to our students.' The school, which is affiliated with the Roman Catholic diocese of Orange County, ran into opposition this year from a parental group after the school allowed a gay couple to enroll their children.
In his upcoming memoir, former U.S. Sen. Jesse Helms, R-North Carolina, acknowledges that he was wrong about the position he took regarding the AIDS epidemic but still maintains that integration was forced before its time by 'outside agitators who had their own agendas,' The Advocate reported. Here's Where I Stand, to be published in September by Random House, contains Helms's first extended comments on national affairs since he retired from the U.S. Senate in 2003 after five terms.
More than a year after gay marriage became legal in Massachusetts, Gov. Mitt Romney said that he would support a newly proposed constitutional amendment that would overturn that right and make it illegal for same-sex couples to marry, The New York Times reported. 'My view is that marriage should be defined as a relationship between a man and a woman,' Romney said. Several gay-rights groups expressed outrage at Romney's remarks, including the Human Rights Campaign and the Log Cabin Republicans. HRC president Joe Solmonese commented that Romney's decision 'is cynical politics masquerading as a public policy debate.' 'This latest attempt by the far right to destroy marriage in Massachusetts is the last gasp of a movement whose outlandish claims about civil marriage equality are being proven wrong every day in the Bay State,' said LCR head Patrick Guerriero.
In the latest development involving embattled Spokane ( Wash. ) mayor Jim West, a Superior Court judge said that city residents who want to oust the mayor at the ballot box should get a chance to gather signatures on a recall petition, according to the Spokesman-Review. An allegation that West used his office improperly to 'solicit internships for young men for his own personal uses' has enough information to move forward to the next step in the recall process, Judge Craig Matheson ruled.
California's six gay and lesbian state lawmakers will make another try at passing a bill that would legalize same-sex marriage in the nation's largest state this year, Gay City News reported. This time, the group plans to 'gut and amend,' an unusual step that involves stripping the contents of another bill that has already passed the Assembly and inserting the language from Mark Leno's marriage bill into the shell. They then hope to pass that bill through the Senate and return it to the Assembly for essentially another shot at enacting gay marriage.
In Iowa, the state Supreme Court refused to tamper with a lower-court decision that dissolved the civil union of two women, saying the conservatives who sued were not harmed and had no standing in the case, the Associated Press reported. The high court noted that it was not judging the merits of the claims by the legal arm of the Des Moines-based Iowa Family Policy Center, a church and a handful of state lawmakers.
Deciding a rare lawsuit that argued the case for gay marriage in federal court, a California judge ruled that a 1996 law recognizing only unions between a man and a woman as valid does not violate the U.S. Constitution, according to the Associated Press. However, U.S. District Judge Gary Taylor also declined to rule on whether a state ban on same-sex marriage violates the civil rights of a gay Southern California couple while a separate legal challenge to California's laws works its way through the state courts.
A New Jersey appeals court issued a 2-1 ruling in favor of the state in Lambda Legal's case seeking marriage equality for same-sex couples. The ruling clears the way for the case to move to the New Jersey Supreme Court for a final ruling. David Buckel, director of Lambda Legal's Marriage Project and the lead attorney on the case, said: 'We are disappointed but not discouraged. We've always known that this case is headed for the New Jersey Supreme Court, and now we're that much closer to the final word.'
The leader of a conservative Christian lobby group says that gays should be required to wear warning labels, according to 365Gay.com . 'We put warning labels on cigarette packs ... yet we 'celebrate' a lifestyle that we know spreads every kind of sexually transmitted disease ...,' said Rev. Bill Banuchi, executive director of the New York Christian Coalition.
In New York, Oneonta mayor Kim Muller has proclaimed the month of June to be Gay and Lesbian Pride Month, the Daily Star reported. It is the city's first such declaration and has pleased supporters of gay rights.
In Florida, Hillsborough County commissioners voted 5-1 to ban public library displays from promoting Gay and Lesbian Pride Month, the St. Petersburg Times reported. An attorney for the National Center for Lesbian Rights pledged to file a lawsuit contending the policy violates free speech and equal protection rights for gays and lesbians.
A transgender woman is suing Saint Anselm College in New Hampshire, alleging sex discrimination and asking the court to order the college to rehire her with back pay plus damages for emotional distress, 365Gay.com reported. Sarah ( formerly Robert ) Blanchette said that she met with officials at the college to say that she was going on a two-week vacation and would be returning as a woman.
TV talk show host Dr. Phil is being credited with helping end a long legal dispute between a transsexual man and his former wife over parental rights involving their two children, 365Gay.com reported. Michael Kantaras had been fighting in court for almost seven years to retain his parental rights to the former couple's two children, Matthew, now age 16, and Irina, now 13.
The Democratic National Committee ( DNC ) has issued a statement on the passing of lesbian activist Jean O'Leary, who was a former DNC LGBT Caucus chair. Howard Dean, the current DNC chair, declared that 'Jean O'Leary was an outstanding leader and a pioneer of gay activism in the Democratic Party. As chair of the LGBT caucus and a member of the DNC executive committee, she was an outspoken advocate of equal rights for all Americans.'
GLSEN ( Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network ) is conducting the 2005 National School Climate Survey, GLSEN's fourth national survey of LGBT youth about their experiences in school. LGBT youth who attended high school or middle school sometime during the current school year ( 2004-2005 ) and who are at least 13 years old are eligible to participate in the anonymous survey. See www.glsen.org/cgi-bin/iowa/all/news/record/1789.html .
With Washington, D.C., planning to build a baseball stadium for its Nationals baseball team on land that includes the O Street block, the gay strip is being pushed to extinction, reported the Washington Post. D.C. officials have notified property owners that the city will make offers for their parcels, possibly by next month, and that it intends to force out those who do not move by year's end. The owners of the half-dozen establishments, as well as gay activists, want the city to help them relocate.
As South Carolina prepares to make same-sex marriage illegal, Quakers ( members of the Religious Society of Friends, one of the oldest Christian denominations in this hemisphere ) have stated their support for marriage for all, the Myrtle Beach Sun News reported. The statement read, in part: 'As Quakers, we are led by the spirit to call upon the state of South Carolina to extend the right of civil marriage, with all its attendant legal rights and privileges, to all couples regardless of gender.'
A U.S. study concluded that gay and bisexual men who meet partners over the Internet are more likely to engage in risky sex but have a greater tendency to do so with people who have the same HIV status, according to Reuters. Forty-one percent of men who arranged to have sex with other men through the Internet reported having unprotected anal intercourse with their last partner, compared with 31 percent of men who met partners in gay bathhouses, 29 percent who used other public sex venues and 25 percent who met in bars or parties.
