Grants Available For Gay, Transgender Projects
New Harvest Urges Small Organizations To Apply
MADISON, Wis. -- The New Harvest Foundation is urging lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender groups to apply for grants.

Nonprofit groups or those with a nonprofit fiscal sponsor are eligible for $500 to $3,000 grants. News Harvest is especially looking for applications from small organizations without easy access to other funding for projects that increase LGBT visibility.

New Harvest Foundation is in its 20th year of funding LGBT communities in south-central Wisconsin, with total grants of almost $300,000 since its founding in 1984.

The deadline for applications is May 31, 2004. For application materials, e-mail New Harvest at nhf@chorus.net or call (608) 256-4204.


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Lawmakers insist SJC overstepped

FALL RIVER -- Claiming the state’s highest court does not have jurisdiction over marriage, a Washington, D.C.-based public interest law firm will file a lawsuit today on behalf of a group of legislators in an effort to prevent same-sex marriages from taking place.

"The state Constitution grants the Legislature the exclusive authority over transferring subject matter jurisdiction in all cases involving marriage, divorce and alimony," said. Rep. Robert Correia, D-Fall River, one of the 13 legislators involved in the suit."We have transferred divorce and alimony to the judiciary, however, there is no instance where we transferred marriage to the judiciary. Therefore, the suit says that the court had no legal standing to make any decision."

Last November, the Supreme Judicial Court in Massachusetts ruled in favor of seven same-sex couples who sued the state after they sought and were denied marriage licenses. The court said it was unconstitutional to prevent gay couples from marrying.

According to Correia the legislators’ lawsuit contends that the court "never addressed how they had this jurisdiction" to make such a ruling.


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Mass. Governor: Marriages Won't Transfer
All Things Considered audio
Gov. Mitt Romney invokes a 90-year-old law barring marriages in Massachusetts if they are not legal in the couple's home state. Many say the move is meant to keep gay couples from flocking to Massachusetts when same-sex marriage becomes legal there on May 17. NPR's Tovia Smith reports.


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Police union apologizes for Net link
By Sean Kelly
Denver Post Staff Writer
The Denver police union apologized Monday after learning that a link on its website infuriated gay-rights supporters.

The Police Protective Association website on Monday linked to another website promoting free bumper stickers, including one that reads, "I Support Denver Police Officer James Turney."

But users who scrolled down the page of printable stickers found one that denounces gays.

"Homosexuality is sexually unintelligent and morally offensive. Gay marriage degrades the integrity of society," the sticker reads.



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Human Rights leader speaks for LGBT progress
By Carly McGee
For The Diamondback
Elizabeth Birch, former director of the Human Rights Campaign organization, spoke yesterday about homosexual politics in the 21st century and the evolution of homosexual rights over the past three decades.

Although homosexuals' rights are becoming more accepted in society, there is still a lot of work to be done for couples, said Birch at a lecture last night in Susquehanna Hall.

The lecture, entitled "An Awakening Planet: LGBT America on the Edge of History," concluded the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender studies program's second annual spring lecture series which stemmed from the June 2003 Supreme Court case Lawrence v. Texas. The case declared that laws criminalizing consensual, private sexual conduct between same-sex partners violate the U.S. Constitution.


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James E. McWilliams: Mythical ideas of manliness
SAN MARCOS, Texas
THE CURRENT CALLS to "defend" marriage as a union between a man and a woman suggest that we're engaged in a cultural war over marriage. In actuality, though, we're grappling with something even more basic: manhood. As the gender-studies people might put it, we're experiencing a "crisis over masculinity," not over marriage per se.

It shouldn't be surprising. For many men, after all, marriage is the last institution in America that honors conventional notions of manhood. Yet we now live in an age when women routinely enjoy lucrative professional careers, sports endorsements, unprecedented sexual liberation, reproductive freedom, and general equal rights. Men haven't been totally emasculated by these hard-earned achievements, but we've found our time-honored roles of patriarch and provider -- roles deeply nurtured by conservative conceptions of marriage -- relegated to quaint remnants of a bygone era.

What heterosexual man in his right mind wouldn't be a little confused by such a radical cultural shift?

Unfortunately, though, instead of confronting these gender-bending developments directly, American men have spent much of the last quarter-century compensating for our supposedly compromised manhood through superficial distractions. As Sex in the City, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, and the concept of a "metrosexual" have become pop-cultural touchstones, many men have sought solace in a myriad of "manly" escapes.


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Federal, state labor laws bloom; some may help you
Chicago Tribune
By Carol Kleiman
Last year, hundreds of laws were enacted by the 50 states. In fact, "a greater volume of labor legislation was enacted in 2003 ... California, Illinois and Texas enacted particularly large numbers of laws," according to Richard R. Nelson and John J. Fitzpatrick Jr., writing in the Monthly Labor Review, a publication of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

"New protections from discrimination were enacted for transgender individuals, prohibitions were enacted on the purchase of goods produced through forced labor, and a California law requires employers to provide health-care benefits," they report.