GAY MARRIAGE Foes target pols
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

BOSTON - With gays and lesbians now legally wed in Massachusetts, foes of gay marriage vowed yesterday to campaign hard, in state and national elections, for candidates willing to reverse the tide.

"It's very difficult, once a right has been claimed in law, to reverse that right, but we're going to try," said the Rev. Christopher Coyne, spokesman for the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston.

The election battle will be waged on two main fronts - an effort nationally to elect congressional candidates supporting a constitutional ban on gay marriage, and an effort in Massachusetts to tilt the balance in the legislature by ousting 10 to 20 lawmakers who opposed a state ban.

"We're not going to let this issue go away," said Kristian Mineau, president of the conservative Massachusetts Family Institute.


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Domestic partner list wins court test
Judge rejects lawsuit targeting N.O. policy
By Gwen Filosa

An Orleans Parish judge has dismissed a lawsuit that attacked the city's policy of offering health care benefits to unmarried domestic partners of its employees.

Ad hoc Civil District Court Judge Louis DiRosa threw out the case brought last year by Eugene Ralph and five other New Orleans residents, all members of the national nonprofit Alliance Defense Fund, which espouses "traditional family values."


The Alliance is challenging same-sex unions across the country, from Portland, Ore., to this week's legalized marriages in Massachusetts.

Ralph and his associates sued as taxpayers in an effort to dismantle the city's "domestic partner registry," which the city keeps so that companies may extend benefits to people who cannot or choose not to legally marry.



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Defendant says he didn't foresee Araujo attack
Kelly St. John, Chronicle Staff Writer

One of three men accused of killing Newark transgender teenager Gwen Araujo testified in his defense Tuesday that he is innocent and had been outside smoking a cigarette on the driveway when the slaying took place.

Jason Cazares, 24, told a Hayward jury that he had never questioned the teen's gender before the night of the killing and that he had tried four times to stop his friends from attacking Araujo that night.

It was after the fourth attempt to break up what he thought was an attack against a young woman that Michael Magidson looked at him and said, "Jay, it's a man," Cazares said.

"It dawned on me then," he said. "It actually hit me. These guys were actually having sex with a man. It was just too way out for me. I walked out the front door."