this is hate.. and this is what is happening.. are you going to wake up to late amerkia...

Gay student's picture vandalized
Homophobic slurs, swastikas are not
considered hate crimes under Idaho law
By Monica Price
Taylor Newbold sits back in his chair. His face doesn’t show much emotion. There is a familiarity in his voice as he recounts events, as if this is just one more story for the file. Newbold’s picture was defaced sometime during the first weekend of April.

Swastikas and the word “fag” were drawn over a picture of Bobbie Brady with Newbold’s name above. Office workers had created a bulletin board facing the stairwell near the student activities office door with a Brady Bunch theme; every character had an employee’s name next to it.

He was the first person to see the vandalism/hate crime when he opened up the office that morning. At first Newbold shrugged it off, “It’s something you get used to after years of high school,” he said. “We [student activities] are always trying to put on a good reflection of the student body here and if something like [this] happens, it’s hard not to react to it ... the people who did this are in the minority,” Newbold said.



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when will governments get is hands off our flesh..

Aussie government considers intervention in sex change case

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) - Australia's government is mulling whether to contest a landmark court decision that allows a 13-year-old girl to undergo sex-change hormone treatment, Prime Minister John Howard said Thursday.

The Family Court ruling announced Tuesday was the first time an Australian child has been given legal approval to undergo the treatment solely because of psychiatric issues.

The girl, who is in state care and has been identified only as Alex, will also receive psychiatric help but will not be allowed to undergo sex change surgery until she turns 18 and is legally considered an adult.

Family Court Chief Justice Alastair Nicholson said he felt the teen - who had been raised as a boy - understood the risks of the treatment.


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Lesbian kiss cut from B.C. school play
By JEREMY HAINSWORTH
Canadian Press
NORTH VANCOUVER, B.C. -- Drama students say their school district is being homophobic after a play featuring a same-sex kiss was censored after the first night's performance.

Broken Theory, written by students in the drama program at Handsworth secondary school, had its debut at North Vancouver's 700-seat Centennial Theatre on April 1.

Drama teacher David Beare said it is about finding the meaning of utopia. One character finds the girl of his dreams and kisses her. Two lesbian characters then kiss.

"It was the most innocuous kiss," he said. "It was a peck like two sisters or a mother and daughter would do."



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Committee: Gay Pride flag to stay
By Noah R. Bombard / Staff Writer
The Bedford School Committee unanimously decided to leave the "Gay Pride" rainbow flag hanging in the John Glenn Middle School hallway. The decision came after a public hearing attended by approximately 200 people Tuesday night. A record turn-out, said officials.

The committee heard input from 40 individuals who volunteered to speak in both opposition and support of the flag.

Middle School Principal Thomas Campbell hung the flag, donated by a lesbian teacher, three months ago as part of a respect for differences and tolerance program that displayed 70 flags, most of the national, throughout the school.

"I'm disappointed, but not surprised," said Gail Valbona, who has been a vocal opponent of the flag and was one of the parents who actively sought time on the School Committee's agenda. "I'm disappointed because they still did not address the issues of age propriety and parental rights."


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Councilmen mixed on benefits
BY JOSEPH MORTON
Whether the Omaha City Council will grant limited benefits for police officers with same-sex partners still was unclear Tuesday, despite a city attorney opinion that the benefits would not violate the State Constitution.

Two council members support the benefits, while two oppose them. Councilman Frank Brown would not comment on the issue.


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Prosecutor: Transgender teen executed

Make no mistake about it, Eddie's death was an execution.
-- Prosecutor Chris Lamiero
HAYWARD, California (AP) -- Prosecutors are presenting the slaying of a transgender teen as an "execution" by young men whipped into a fury by a deception that gnawed at their tender egos.

"They decided ... that the wages of Eddie Araujo's sin of deception were death," prosecutor Chris Lamiero said as the trial got under way Wednesday.


Araujo, 17, was beaten and strangled in 2002 in a slaying that has drawn national attention to violence against transgender people, or those who believe their sexual identity is at odds with their biology.


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GAY GARCONS SERVE UP BITTER SEX-HARASS DISH
By WILLIAM NEUMAN

Harassment was on the menu at the fancy Manhattan eatery Town, according to two gay waiters who charged yesterday they were abused by other staffers, including a saucy sommelier who would walk up behind them and shove the neck of a wine bottle into the seat of their pants.


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Finneran signals he won't try to block start of gay marriages
By Raphael Lewis and Frank Phillips, Globe Staff, 4/15/2004
House Speaker Thomas M. Finneran said yesterday he does not intend to stop gay couples from marrying in Massachusetts next month, leaving Governor Mitt Romney as the last Beacon Hill leader contemplating a legal strategy to block same-sex marriages.

Finneran, one of the most prominent and powerful foes of gay marriage in Massachusetts government, said there is a minor reference in the state budget proposal House Democrats released yesterday that calls for a report detailing the "revenue and expenditure impact" of gay marriage.

"I don't anticipate any other action," Finneran told reporters during a visit to the Globe's editorial board. The concise statement echoed one he uttered earlier this month at a meeting with the editorial board of the Worcester Telegram & Gazette, which reported that the speaker said, "Where it stands now, same-sex marriages will occur" once the ruling takes effect May 17.



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Judge says no to Scout lease on Fiesta isle
Action is same as Balboa Park ruling
By Ray Huard
The Boy Scouts lease of a Fiesta Island aquatics center on city-owned land is just as unconstitutional as its lease of public land in Balboa Park, a federal judge ruled yesterday.

U.S. District Judge Napoleon Jones Jr. said the lease of the half-acre aquatics center violates the constitutional separation of church and state because the Boy Scouts is a religious organization.

The same judge ruled in August that the Boy Scouts lease of Camp Balboa, where it has its regional headquarters, was unconstitutional because the Scouts require members to profess a belief in God.


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Gay Vice President?: Historians debate the private life of William Rufus De Vane King
By JAY REEVES
Associated Press Writer
SELMA, Ala. -- As a U.S. vice president, William Rufus De Vane King was a "Jeopardy!" question waiting to happen.

Entombed under a huge oak tree in Selma, the city he helped found, the obscure King is best known as the only member of the executive branch sworn in outside the United States. He was inaugurated in Cuba in 1853 and died weeks later.

But with the nation debating gay marriage and civil rights for homosexuals, King is gaining new attention for another part of his life that local admirers would rather not discuss. According to some historians, rumors that circulated 150 years ago were accurate: King and James Buchanan, who years later would become the nation's 15th president, were a devoted homosexual couple.

Neither man ever married, yet they lived together for years in an arrangement that was fodder for critics and political opponents of the time, including Andrew Jackson, the seventh president.