::   Sean Penn was honored as Best Actor of 2008 by the National Society of Film critics for his portrayal of Harvey Milk in Gus van Sant's Milk. Penn was a runaway winner in that category with 87 votes. 40 votes went to runner-up Mickey Rourke for his comeback role in The Wrestler. In the award for Best Director, Van Sant came in second to Mike Leigh, director of Happy Go Lucky. Van Sant was in the running because of two films, Milk and Paranoid Park. Critics handed out their Best Picture award to Waltz with Bashir, directed by Ari Folman.

         ::   Petitions were filed in Kalamazoo, Mich. on Dec. 31 to repeal an anti-bias measure that was adopted unanimously by the city council there early in the month. The new law expanded an existing human rights ordinance making it illegal to use sexual orientation to discriminate in housing, public accommodations, and employment. Anti-gay activist Gary Glenn of American Family Association of Michigan filed petitions with over 1,600 signatures, according to the city clerk. If at least 1,273 of them are valid city registered voters, the new ordinance to be suspended immediately. City commissioners will then decide at a Jan. 26 meeting whether to repeal the ordinance or place it on a ballot for city voters to decide.

         ::   Prominent and powerful New Jersey politicians, including Gov. John Corzine, generally admit that the state's civil union law doesn't provide full equality for lesbian and gay couples. That's also what state commission appointed to study the unions concluded. "New Jersey stands the best shot of any US state to be the first to enact marriage equality through legislation rather than by court order," said Steven Goldstein, chairman of Garden State Equality, a gay rights organization. (California's legislature twice passed marriage equality laws that were vetoed.)  Corzine has said he'd sign a bill if it reaches his desk, but some legislators say they'd rather rather not deal with fixing the problem of inequality until sometime after a November, 2009 election when the governor and all members of the Assembly go before the voters.

           ::   After he published a calendar that features shirtless hunks who also happen to be Mormon missionaries, BYU grad Chad Hardy was stripped of his degree by the Mormon university. Advocate talks to him (and shows all of his calendar's hunks). Hardy explained that although he's left the church, he still considers himself a Mormon. "Mormonism is much like Judaism in that one may stop observing the practices of the religion, but culturally still identify with it." The magazine shows the guys who posed for Hardy in both their official white shirts with name tags and without their shirts.

Source: Olympian
Gay and lesbian partners in Washington shouldn't expect full marriage equality to be enacted in the 2009 legislature, but should expect to see more rights and responsibilities added to the state's existing domestic partnership law, Sen. Ed Murray (D-Seattle) told Brad Shannon, political editor of the Olympian in an interview.

"We view the domestic partnership as a multiyear process to engage the citizens and the Legislature in a discussion about what our families are about and what the issues are about," Murray said in the interview, adding that he plans to introduce a same-sex-marriage bill, as he does most years, but doesn't plan to push it this year.

Lawmakers created domestic partnerships in 2007 as a step toward what they said at the time was a long-range goal of marriage equality.

Murray and the legislature's five other openly gay members are working with the gay community on a bill to expand coverage of the partnerships. The current version of this year's bill -- dealing with pensions, parenting issues, and taxes -- is a cumbersome 1,900 pages, the Olympian reports.

Murray told the Olympia paper that the draft bill is so long because it needs to make multiple references to very specific language in the pension law. Other issues are more generic and deal with such topics as fishing licenses, according to the Olympian.

But some parts of the bill -- particularly the pension-related pieces -- might fall out of the bill because they could have a fiscal effect in a year when budget cuts are the story of the day.

"We haven't settled yet on a bill and a strategy," Murray told the Olympian. "The pension part is about $1 million. There are some other tax issues, and those are in the tens of thousands. But it is a year when a lot of bills are going to die because of costs."

Josh Friedes, advocacy director of the state's largest LGBT advocacy group, Equal Rights Washington,  told the Olympian Friday that he understands the state's budget predicament but also thinks gay and lesbian couples are not getting equal treatment in the law today from programs that help families -- with health care and pensions, for instance.

He cautioned against dropping protections just because they might have a cost.

Source: Same-sex rights might expand | The Olympian

Source: Columbia Missourian
LGBT activists in Columbia, Mo. -- home to the University of Missouri -- hope their city will become the fourth jurisdiction in the state to create a domestic partnership registry.

Supporters of the registry say it's important to establish a list of simple rights and suggested benefits and to validate the relationships of LGBT individuals, according to the Columbia Missourian.

Although at least one of them is more limited than what advocates hope to achieve in Columbia, domestic partnership registries have already been established in St. Louis, Kansas City, and Jackson County.

Missouri banned same-sex marriage four years before the recent passage of California's ban, Proposition 8, but supporters of the registry point out that this is a different issue.

"This is not marriage," said A.J. Bockelman, executive director of Missouri's statewide LGBT advocacy group PROMO. "This is nowhere near the rights and privileges of marriage."

"The extra, added component that can be good across the board for registries is giving an employer some way to recognize there is some sort of a relationship between two people in order to have domestic partner benefits," Bockelman said. "Domestic partner registries by no means require a business entity to have (domestic partner) benefits."

Travis Lauhoff, 20, told the Missourian that he and his partner, Jason Barber, 24, would sign onto the registry if it passes. They both told the Missourian that they think Columbia is very accepting, and Lauhoff said he thinks passing an ordinance to create a registry is possible in the city.

Lauhoff said he moved to the college town to escape discrimination. While he was living in Marceline, businesses refused to hire him, he told the paper, and people frequently threatened and taunted him, he said.

Lauhoff said that he enjoys his current job at Subway, where he hasn't felt any discrimination in regard to his sexual orientation.

"I'd like to have all the same rights that straight people have," Lauhoff said. He paused, then continued. "That may never happen, but ..."

Showing his resignation in his hopes for equality, he told Missourian reporter Molly Harbarber that his opinion of Columbia wouldn't change if the council didn't approve the registry. He said he supports legalizing gay marriage, but right now he wants mostly to show people that same-sex relationships are valid.

"Most of my straight friends think (gay people) go from person to person," Lauhoff said. "You've got to give them positive reinforcement. You've got to show them people who have been together for a while and actually are happy."

The Columbia LGBT community and its supporters are lobbying Mayor Darwin Hindman and the rest of the city council to garner support for a registry.

Advocates for the ordinance have contacted the council about the idea. Sixth Ward Councilwoman Barbara Hoppe said she saw a draft of the ordinance already.

"We talked about it, and I had a couple suggestions," Hoppe told the Missourian. "There's still some kinks to work out of it. So, I think they're gonna come back and take a little while to sort of revise it and talk with some more people. I think if the ordinance is constructed well, it has the potential to serve a variety of people in a positive way. My guess is that it would have a good chance of passing."

She suggested that the language of the current draft should make it more obvious that its points are optional rather than mandatory.

She said registries also could benefit people outside the LGBT community, such as elderly heterosexual couples.

"A point that they raised was that it would apply to senior citizens who don’t get married for a variety of reasons, and this will help them in terms of having a better process for visiting in the hospitals and a variety of other things," Hoppe said.

"We’re not just thinking of the gay folks and the LGBT community; we’re thinking of everybody because Columbia has a huge drawing of retired people," said David Huddlestonsmith, 64, who worries about his daughter and partner if he were to die. "If we had a DPR, it would be more attractive to all people," he said.

Huddlestonsmith said he has talked to the mayor about the proposal.

"We're asking basically for some equality," Huddlestonsmith told the Missourian.

"If people really pay attention to what is being asked for, which is the same human rights for LGBT people as other people, there shouldn't be any real opposition," Huddlestonsmith said. "We are a progressive community, we're a university town, and we really need to catch up in some of our policies to other cities."

Fifth Ward Councilwoman Laura Nauser told the Missourian that she is "all for" visitation rights, such as at hospitals and prisons, for everyone but is uncertain she "approves of marriage in the traditional sense" for same-sex couples.

Third Ward Councilman Karl Skala told the Missourian it is "no secret" that he's been supportive of the LGBT community. He encourages residents to share with the council any proposals they think would improve the city.

Although he said he hasn't seen a proposal for the registry or talked to other council members about it, he told the Missourian he approved of the idea. "At the outset, I think it sounds like a great idea," he said.

Skala  but he said he feels "pretty comfortable in this community that there's a lot of us that approach these big issues from a thorough point of view."

Many entities and businesses, including Boone Hospital Center in Columbia and all Fortune 500 companies, give partners health insurance benefits already. It's not mandatory, though, and Bockelman said the registries can frustrate people because of their limits.

Some registries give rights to partners concerning the disposition of remains, notification of family members, use and access to public facilities and health-care decisions.

But the St. Louis registry, passed in 1998, is "very limited in scope," according to Bockelman, ensuring only the right to visit a partner in the hospital or in jail.

Source: LGBT community promotes domestic partnership registry | Columbia Missourian

Source: Contra Costa Times, San Francisco Chronicle
Police arrested three men Wednesday in the brutal December abduction and gang rape of a 28-year-old lesbian woman in Richmond, California.

A fourth man turned himself in Thursday afternoon.

A 31-year-old man and two teenagers suspected in the December assault have been jailed, Richmond police said Thursday. The case is being investigated as a hate crime.

Richmond police also issued a $1 million warrant for a fourth man who was still at large Thursday morning and considered armed and dangerous, and a flight risk.

Police Lt. Mark Gagan said early Thursday that the fourth suspect, 21-year-old Josue Gonzalez, has addresses in Richmond and San Rafael. He is 5-foot-5 inches, weighs about 130 pounds, and uses the nickname "Pato", Contra Costa Times reports.

Update: According to Contra Costa Times, Gonzales turned himself in to Richmond police Thursday afternoon after police made the announcement. 

Police arrested Humberto Hernandez Salvador, 31, at 8:30 pm Wednesday at his Richmond home on suspicion of kidnapping, carjacking, rape, probation violations, and other felony crimes, Gagan said. Detectives believe he was the ringleader.

A 15-year-old was also arrested at his home and charged with felony counts of sexual assault, kidnapping, and robbery

A 16-year-old male from Hercules who turned himself in around midnight, was also charged with felonies related to the attack. Both teenagers are being held in a juvenile detention center, San Francisco Chronicle reports. Police declined to release their names because they are juveniles.

The 16-year-old, who was known by the nickname "Blue," was accompanied by his family, Gagan said.

Salvadore "had the most involvement and gave orders and directions to the other individuals," Gagan said, according to the Chronicle. "But they're all responsible for the crimes that were committed against the victim."

The gang rape occurred Dec. 13 in Richmond's Belding Woods neighborhood. The victim, who is an out lesbian had a rainbow sticker on her car, a symbol of gay pride. She parked her car on the 1500 block of Visalia Avenue at about 9:30 pm.

The four suspects approached her as she walked to a house, struck her with an object, and took her somewhere away from the street where they assaulted her. The suspects made comments about her sexual orientation during the assault, according to police.

They took her wallet and keys, which they used to open her car. They then took her in the car to a secluded area about seven blocks away, where they continued to rape her, both inside and outside the vehicle, police said, according to Contra Costa Times.

The high amount of attention generated by the case brought police many tips, some of which panned out, Gagan said. He declined to say whether any tipsters had earned the $10,000 reward, according to the Times, but the Chronicle reports that the reward fund has not yet been distributed.

In the wake of the incident, the community held vigils, distributed leaflets, and made announcements at local churches, he added.

"The crime had an immediate effect on our community," Gagan said. "Locally people were very afraid to know that these people were out there."

Anyone with information about the case or the fourth suspect is asked to call Richmond police Detective Yesenia Rogers at 510-672-1718.

Source: Three suspects arrested in gang rape, fourth suspect still at large | Contra Costa Times 
Arrests in gang rape case | San Francisco Chronicle

Source: Portland Monthly, Oregonian, Associated Press 

Potland, Ore. Mayor Sam Adams photo: Randy L. Rasmussen/The Oregonian

Talk about a long transition -- Portland's new mayor, Sam Adams, was elected to the office seven months ago, but he'll still have to wait another two days for his formal swearing-in. But he's finally mayor. Adams, 45, was officially sworn into office at 12:01 am New Year's Day, according to Associated Press. The informal ceremony at City Hall was attended by a crowd of about 40 that included his mother and his partner.

The transition turned out to be so long because Adams won a surprisingly easy victory over 12 other candidates in a mayoral primary in May. Since he won over 50 percent of the vote in that race, he wasn't required to run in the November general election.

Adams, incidentally, becomes the first out gay chief executive of a top-40 American city.

Although a friend of Adams's -- referring to former city commissioner's notoriously casual style -- called him "the least gay gay man I know", that aspect of his biography is mentioned in virtually all of the many profiles written about the mayor. On his superbly designed and well maintained website, CommissionerSam.com, Adams subtly hints at it with a list of numbers reminiscent of a credit card company's ad campaign. One of the items is: "Number of states where Sam can get married: 3 2". (The three is crossed out.) Priceless.

But that Adams is gay did not become an issue in the mayor's race. None of his opponents mentioned it.

"This is a testament to how fair-minded Portlanders are that it wasn't an issue," Adams is quoted saying by AP. "I spend my time on the basic issues of life. A part of that includes equal rights, but that's not even close to a majority of the time."

The new mayor's dating did occasionally become a minor political issue during his term as city commissioner, and during his former job as a top aide to former Mayor Vera Katz. Some questioned his support for an expensive initiative to send the Oregon Ballet on a trip last year to perform at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, Portland Monthly reports. They pointed out that Adams had dated the ballet's artistic director, Christopher Stowell, for about six months several years ago.

(Stowell, by the way, is the 41-year-old son of Pacific Northwest Ballet's revered former artistic directors Francia Russell and Kent Stowell and was principal dancer with the San Francisco Ballet in the 1990's.)

In many ways, Adams welcomes that kind of scrutiny. As city commissioner, as mayoral candidate, and now as mayor, Adams talks frequently about the need for what he calls "transparency." Part of that -- and a major factor in his surprisingly easy victory in the crowded field running for mayor last spring -- is approachability.

His website, where he's always referred to as "Sam" is part of that. It includes popular YouTube videos along with press releases on almost any issue Adams was involved in as a city commissioner. The site also includes a blog on which Sam shares with residents of the city more than most politicians would.

In a September, 2007 feature on Adams in the Oregonian, reporter Anna Griffin explains

As a city commissioner, Adams has become the leading voice for transparent government and an enthusiastic publicity hound. He invited a TV crew to film his surgery, brought cameras along as he manned a Burgerville drive-through and strutted the stage in a local charity version of "Dancing With the Stars."

In a major feature on the new mayor for this month's Portland Monthly, writer Harriet Rubin reports that Adams is often swarmed even on a trip to a convenience store by Portlanders who stop him to tell their stories.

His website lists the "approximate number of schedule requests in August to meet with Sam" as 2500.

A few of those requests might have come his partner of nearly a year, Peter Zuckerman, a twenty-nine-year-old reporter who covers nearby Clackamas County for the Oregonian, Portland's daily newspaper. Rubin reports that Adams and Zuckerman are forced to schedule most of their dates.

"I know I have to share Sam," Zuckerman told Rubin with a sigh.

Adams's new job pays $118,144, Portland Monthly notes in its profile. Adams will oversee a budget of about $3 billion, manage a city government of 8,985 employees, and serve as the public face of Portland.

Those are all aspects of the job that Adams seems to relish, according to all the many profiles, which often touch on his biography.

From the Oregonian profile that ran a year ago when his run for mayor was still just a rumor:

There's no doubt, however, that Adams grew up hard and poor. His schoolteacher father moved the family from Montana to the Oregon coast when Adams was in elementary school to try his hand --without much success --at commercial fishing. After his parents divorced, Adams' mother struggled to raise four children on her own.

From a young age, Adams felt different from just about everyone else in his rough-and-tumble family. He was quieter, more inquisitive and more sensitive. As he and his mother tell it, his father and siblings bullied him. They criticized his friends, his hobbies, his longish hair. They called him "faggot" before he even began to consider that he might be gay.

He would escape to a ravine behind the house to fish and brood. He spent much of high school living by himself after his parents divorced. Those years alone, he says, were the best of his childhood.

"Sam was just more tenderhearted than the rest of us," says his mother, Kara Adams.

His rise to leadership comes at what Portland Monthly calls "a pivotal moment, as the city grows in the national consciousness as a leader in 'green' issues and a coveted place to live."

In the midst of a desperate economy, Adams takes over a city that is proud and even -- some might say -- extravagantly boastful about its uniqueness. Portland Monthly summarizes, "This is, after all, a place known for its quality of life -- a city with more miles of bike lanes than any in the country, and with an ordinance limiting building heights so as to protect the distant view of Mount Hood."

And:

For years, other US cities have looked to the Rose City for progressive ideas about transportation and urban planning. As cities scramble for a foothold in developing economies, Adams would like to export to the world the Portland way of doing things, drawing attention especially from countries across the Pacific.

He already thinks of himself as Portland’s traveling mayor. He returned from China in September and will go back with local CEOs in April. He wants to find sister colleges in Asia for OHSU and Portland State University, and establish markets for Portland’s 'green" expertise in terribly polluted countries like China. ...

"Sam’s got a city that's got to figure itself out in a more complicated, global world," says Len Bergstein, a veteran political consultant who once worked for legendary Mayor Neil Goldschmidt and served as an adviser to Dozono [Adams's main opponent in the mayoral race]. "Portland is positioned where the world’s economies are heading. It's a tougher job than Neil had."

Adams and his staff of young advisers (some call them the "yes-tykes") look to Amsterdam as one model for their city, Rubin reports in Portland Monthly.

Adams, who believes Portland’s uniqueness will make the city increasingly important, has been immersing himself in the history of Amsterdam’s commerce and its current resurgence as a European hub. Tom Miller, his chief of staff -- sort of like Kissinger, but with a skateboard -- even keeps a bicycle map of Amsterdam on his wall.

But if Adams presents himself as highly approachable by residents of the city, he's also widely feared by some who have to deal with him in an official capacity.

An architect who had to deal with him when he was chairman of a city council committee overseeing a controversial tram project told the Monthly's Rubin that Adams made the project more complicated.

"As soon as Sam took over, the spirit of the project became aggressive," tram architect Sarah Graham told Rubin. "From that time on, everybody worried about the politics of the project. We went from excitement to fear. Everyone was worried about Sam."

Rubin asked Graham about the project, which was eventually completed.

"God help you," Graham said when I told her I was writing about Adams. "He's very vindictive." One person I reached begged, "Please don’t even say you reached me by phone."

The 2007 Oregonian profile also touched on Adams's temper:

Adams chalks up his reputation for rudeness to a few isolated incidents when he worked for [former Mayor Vera] Katz. He finds the talk about his temperament puzzling and says what other people mistake for anger is actually passion. "Are gay guys only supposed to be funny?" he asks.

Yet his new role hasn't eliminated or reduced his tendency to erupt. There have been outbursts in closed-door meetings with bureaucrats, during delicate business negotiations and at cocktail parties and fundraisers. ...

But people who worked with him under Katz, bureaucrats who report to him now and businesses owners who have dealt with him as a city commissioner say Adams can treat people around him the same way his father treated him.

In other words, they say, he's a bully. In an instant and without warning his voice rises to a sharp point and a certain four-letter word becomes the bedrock of his vocabulary. The explosions, witnesses say, are directed at women more often than men.

When Rubin asked Adams why so many had refused to talk on the record about him, he told her, "People regard me as fundamental to their livelihood. That’s why they won’t talk. But I have a reputation for being impatient."

But he also told her that he's overcome much of his earlier impatience. Adams told her the inflammatory days are gone. He blames his earlier temper on sleep deprivation. "My mind was waking up 127 times a night because of sleep apnea," he says. He has had three jaw surgeries since 2006 to relieve his symptoms, Rubin reports -- becoming significantly thinner in the process.

Source: Becoming Sam Adams | Portland Monthly Magazine
Say hello to Mayor Sam | Oregonian
Portland: Largest US city with openly gay mayor | Associated Press

Source: Los Angeles Times, New York Magazine, Newsday
Los Angeles Times reporter Erika Hayasaki talked to students at New York's Harvey Milk High School just after they'd seen a special screening of the biographical movie about their school's namesake.

"When it finished, I just felt so proud that I go to his school," Matthew "Matty" Agostini, 18, told Hayasaki. "After he died, when they showed the people marching and there was a long line of people holding candles, I remember thinking if I was there, I would have been walking too."

Orville Bell, a teacher at the school, told Hayasaki that after watching the movie, "I almost felt like screaming into the audience, 'I teach at that school!' "

"I'm glad the film has come now for students to see the man and what he fought for," Bell said. "It really showed a man who sacrificed for me, and for them."

Harvey Milk was born and raised in New York. He was elected a San Francisco supervisor in 1977 and helped lead a successful statewide battle in California against Proposition 6, a ballot measure that would have banned gays from teaching in California public schools.

Milk was assassinated in 1978 at San Francisco City Hall by another supervisor who had resigned, Dan White.

The high school in New York that bears his name opened more than two decades ago as a privately funded program -- the first school in the country that focused mainly on the special needs of LGBT students.

In 2003, Hayasaki reports, the New York City Board of Education expanded public funding to the campus and doubled its enrollment. Nearly 100 students now attend, including a few straight students, although most are gay and transferred from campuses where they faced discrimination and harassment because of their sexuality. 

In a January, 2005 feature, New York magazine described the school, shortly after it reopened following a major renovation:

Located on the third floor of a nineteenth-century high-rise at 2 Astor Place, the Harvey Milk High School could, with its chic multi-million-dollar renovation, be mistaken for the hip headquarters of a downtown ad agency. Eighteen spanking-new glass-walled classrooms, many outfitted with state-of-the-art computers, are arrayed along a curving hallway lined with candy-colored orange lockers. With its compact physical space and tiny enrollment, the school, David Mensah argues, is simply one example of the Bloomberg administration’s revolutionary approach to education: the breaking up of vast, anonymous, 7,000-student educational gristmills into smaller, more intimate schools devoted to a single theme—science, dance, the arts.

The school has a 92% graduation rate, far above the state average, and 60% of students attend institutions of higher learning. But despite its two decades of success, Harvey Milk School hasn't become the national model that some hoped it would be when it started.

Only one other school in the country -- in Milwaukee -- specifically targets LGBT students, and that one is aimed at a broader group and avoids explicitly stating LGBT issues in its mission statement.

Some other school systems, including those in Los Angeles, Seattle, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Madison, Wis., and Cambridge, Mass., provide satellite or store- front schools for gays or train educators to deal with harassment and equality issues based on actual or perceived sexual orientation of students, according to Newsday.

Last month the Chicago Board of Education delayed highly publicized plans to open the city's first public high school for gay and lesbian students.

The school was supported in public meetings and promoted by the head of Chicago's school system, Arne Duncan, who has since been tapped by his friend, President-elect Barack Obama, to become the next Secretary of Education.

But plans for the school were put on hold after they were criticized by Mayor Richard Daley and by several local preachers. The concept for the school gradually changed after critics of the original concept convinced the planning team to broaden the scope to anyone who had been bullied, instead of focusing mainly on gay students.

Daley suggested that it might be better to improve anti-bullying efforts in all schools rather than "isolating" gay students.

Milk High in New York has faced similar criticism. For its January, 2005 feature on the school, New York magazine found one "liberal critic" who called the school "a uniquely bad idea".

Jonathan Turley, a professor of constitutional law at George Washington University and an outspoken proponent of gay rights, who has nonetheless remained a critic of the school. He told New York in 2005 that the school promotes the return to a "separate but equal" educational system uncomfortably reminiscent of one of the most shameful episodes in American history, when black students were placed in separate schools from their white peers -- supposedly for their own good.

But Hannah Devane, 17, a student at Harvey Milk, told Hayasaki that mainstream schools failed her. She felt alienated and became so depressed, Devane said, she didn't get out of bed in the mornings. She stopped attending classes.

When Devane was 13, she heard about the Harvey Milk school in the news and decided to ask her counselor to help her transfer.

"Coming here changed my life," she told Hayasaki. "Now, I'm an A student."

The Milk school operates under Department of Education mandates to teach a city-approved curriculum of math, English, science, and other core subjects, New York magazine explained. There is no special gay slant to the curriculum, but Bell told New York three years ago that he feels more freedom to address gay issues with greater frankness in the classroom than he would in another high school.

Bell, a teacher in public schools for 30 years, recalled for LA Times's Hayasaki the 1970s and '80s, when he worked in Maryland and did not feel safe enough to reveal to colleagues that he was gay. "I remember very clearly playing the game, saying, 'Yes, I had a girlfriend, and we were planning to get married.' It was all a sham."

The current generation of gays, Bell told LA Times, does not face the same stigmas. They see gay leaders holding public offices, widely portrayed in the media and working in the political and corporate worlds. Bell said it might be hard for them to realize there was a time when people could get arrested or fired from their jobs for being gay.

Although students may feel more comfortable coming out today, the battle lines over gay rights have grown more ferocious, Tanya Koifman, a social worker at the school, told Hayasaki.

"Of course things have changed since the 1970s," Koifman said. "But there is a major civil rights struggle we are living through right now. [Gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender] people do not have the same rights in terms of marriage, in terms of adoption. We have a very long way to go."

In August 2003, Democratic state senator Ruben Diaz Sr., a Pentecostal minister from the Bronx, sued the city over the Harvey Milk High School. Diaz has been frequently in the news in the past two months as a member of a "Gang of Three" dissident Democrats who are withholding their support from their party's presumptive state Senate leader.

Diaz insists that the senate leader, Malcolm Smith, agree not to bring a marriage equality bill to the floor of the senate for a vote.

When he sued to close down Milk School in 2003, Diaz claimed he was concerned about the city devoting millions of dollars to a school servicing just 100 students --"with all kind of high-technology equipment, air conditioning, the best teachers" --when so many other city schools, like those in his district, were in deep crisis.

His suit, which was supported by a right-wing activist legal group, claimed that money spent for Milk school discriminated against other students in the system.

As happened in Chicago, the suit forced the Milk School to strip from its mission statement explicit reference to LGBT students. Like Milwaukee's school and the one proposed for Chicago, Harvey Milk School is open to all students, but twenty years after opening, it still provides a special refuge for some.

Source: Gay school's students get a history lesson with 'Milk' | Los Angeles Times 
A City School For Gay Teens | Newsday
The Harvey Milk School Has No Right to Exist. Discuss. | New York

Source: Park Record, Salt Lake Tribune
A gay man who lives in Pinebrook, near the Utah ski-resort town of Park City, twice placed full page ads in his local newspaper, the Park Record, saying he was "appalled and dismayed" with the role of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Proposition 8, the California campaign that stripped from gay and lesbian couples the right to get married there.

But Bruce Palenske says that when he agreed to buy space for the same ad in Salt Lake City's dailies, the company that handles advertising for both papers jacked up the price, forcing Palenske to cancel the ad.

He suggests the Mormon church pressured the company, MediaOne of Utah, because of the content of the advertisement.

Although he admitted to Park Record, that he doesn't have direct evidence of a church role in dispute, Palenski asked the Park Record's reporter, Jay Hamburger, "Who else would not want it to appear? It was against the LDS church."

Palenske, a gay man in a 20-year relationship who founded www.fullequality.org, says in the full-page advertisement printed by the Park Record that the Mormon church "pushed and prodded" members to contribute money supporting Proposition 8.

Two similar versions of the advertisement ran in the Park Record on Nov. 22 and Dec. 24, with Palenske urging people to "join me in standing up against the LDS Church in the matter."

The advertisements published in the Record -- like the version submitted to the Salt Lake City papers -- point readers toward a website and include an IRS form that can be used to complain about the LDS Church's tax-exempt status because the church, through lobbying its members to contribute their time and cash, helped Proposition 8 succeed in California, eliminating the right of same-sex couples to marry in that state.

Soon after the ad was published in the Park City paper, Palenske said, a salesperson MediaOne contacted him about buying space in Salt Lake Tribune and the Deseret News for a similar ad.

Palenske agreed to pay $2,000 to run a full-page ad last Sunday in both papers, according to a contract supplied to the Salt Lake Tribune by his spokesman, Sal Peralta.

Palenske told Park Record that he got a call from a MediaOne representative at just before 1 pm on the Friday before the ad was scheduled to run, telling him the $2,000 quote was not accurate. The ad would cost the full $10,500, Palenske says he was told.

Brent Low, president and chief executive officer of MediaOne of Utah told the Salt Lake Tribune via e-mail that the original ad price was "misquoted," and, "a manager caught the error and corrected the rate."

The request, Low told the Tribune, had been to run the ad only in the Tribune -- not the LDS Church-owned Deseret News . He noted a similar ad, purchased by a New York-based gay-rights group and titled "Lies in the name of the Lord," ran in the Tribune earlier this month. The group paid the correct price, the Tribune reports.

But, according to Park Record, an invoice provided by Palenske indicates the ad was scheduled to run in the Tribune in the A section and on the newspaper's Web site. It was also to be placed in the A section of the Deseret News and on the paper's Web site, according to the invoice.

Now retired, Palenske spent his career building what he says was the largest set of Little Caesars franchises, Park Record reports. He told the paper that he spent between $2 million and $3 million  over a five-year period on advertisements in the Salt Lake newspapers while he was at the pizza franchise.

"I just feel very betrayed that once I need something done . . . that they don't know me," Palenske says.

Source: Local gay man fumes at Mormon church | Park Record
Activist claims censorship by newspapers | Salt Lake Tribune

Source: Seattle Post Intelligencer, St. Andrew's announcement
V. Gene Robinson, Episcopal Bishop of New Hampshire and the first out gay bishop in the world wide Anglican Communion, visits Seattle in January to talk about his personal story as told in his recent memoir, In The Eye of the Storm: Swept to the Center by God.

Robinson is the first out, non-celibate gay man to lead a diocese in the Episcopal Church. He was elected by members of the New Hampshire dioceses and confirmed in office by a vote of US bishops at the 2003 General Convention of the church.

On Friday Jan. 12 at 7:30 pm, Robinson will present a public address entitled "Civil Rights in the 21st Century: Why Religion Matters" at Town Hall. Tickets for the event are $15 ($10 for students) and are available through Brown Paper Bag Tickets or at the at the Cathedral Shop, 206-323-1040. 

Proceeds from the address will benefit Lambert House and the low-income counseling service at St. Andrew's, one of the sponsors of Robinson's visit.

Robinson will also participate in several worship services during his two-day visit.

He will preach and celebrate at a Eucharist at St. Mark’s Cathedral on Jan. 12 at 4:30 pm.

He will also be the preacher at a special Evensong service on Jan. 13, 2009 at 7 pm at St. Andrew's church, 111 NE 80th Street. The service will be led by the Rt. Rev. Greg Rickel, bishop of Diocese of Olympia.

The service will be open to the public if there is room after member of St. Andrew's parish have reserved seats. Information is available  from the church's website.

Robinson's visit is sponsored by St. Andrew's Parish, the Episcopal Diocese of Olympia, and Integrity, a nationwide organization of gay and lesbian Episcopalians.

Robinson's consecration as the first openly gay Anglican bishop exacerbated long-running tensions within the Anglican community.

Some Anglican primates -- the leaders of national churches -- demanded that the Episcopal Church, which is the American province of the Anglican Communion, be punished for consecrating a gay bishop.

Within the Episcopal Church, a number of parishes and four dioceses have seceded from the US church. Early this month, the dissident churches formed a rival province to the Episcopal church.

Source: Bishop Robinson comes to Seattle | Seattle PI
Bishop Gene Robinson to Visit Seattle and St. Andrew’s | St. Andrew's announcement