Supporters rally for HB 99; want Sente to take action
By Bridin Reynolds Hughes

Supporters of HB 99 targeted pressure to bring the antidiscrimination bill to a vote on Senate Pro Temp Thurman Adams, D-Bridgeville, during a rally held at Legislative Hall May 4.

In the wake of the rally, attended by approximately six dozen people including political activists and prominent clergy members, a petition to see the contentious bill released out of committee is circulating via the internet by the Delaware Liberty Fund and has garnered over 800 signatures as of May 6.

The petition, like the rally, identifies Adams as the power player in a legislative struggle which has been in play for four years. The House passed the legislation for a second time last May.


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Police seek information over brutal homophobic attack
Gay.com UK

Police in South London are appealing to anyone with information about a vicious homophobic attack to contact them.

The attack, which took place in Ladywell Road on Wednesday April 21, saw a man get beaten up at a bus shelter. His two attackers shouted verbal abuse at the 37 year old, before punching him and banging his head against the metal shelter.

According to the police, he required hospital treatment for his injuries, which included those to his head.

The suspects were both white and around 30 years old, wearing dark clothing, which may have been suits. One had short-cropped brown hair. They had come out of the Phoenix Club before approaching the man, officers say.

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Virginia diocese split over gay bishop
By Julia Duin
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Six months after the Nov. 2 consecration of V. Gene Robinson as the world's first openly homosexual Episcopal bishop, the issue divides the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia more than ever.

    After Virginia Bishop Peter J. Lee became one of 62 bishops who voted last summer at a church convention to approve Bishop Robinson's consecration, 24 parishes staged an economic boycott of the diocese.

    That resulted in a $900,000 budget deficit. The diocese produced a "task force on giving" that will begin hearings this month, aimed at coaxing churches into giving far more to the Richmond-based headquarters.

    But in the 89,000-member diocese, the country's largest, many churches already have cut back budgets, frozen their building campaigns and lost members over the contentious issue. And just before diocesan clergy left for their annual retreat last week, word came out of a retired Episcopal bishop, 87-year-old Otis Charles, "marrying" his 62-year-old partner in an Episcopal church in San Francisco.


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Men launch gay/lesbian support group (North Iowa Neighbors)
By JULIE BIRKEDAL


MASON CITY — Living honestly is important to Dr. Gary Swenson and Dean Genth.

The two men, who see themselves as family to one another and are gay, will hold the charter meeting for PFLAG-North Iowa on Tuesday.

The name stands for Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays. The group will meet monthly at 7 p.m. at Mason City Public Library.

“We love it here in Mason City and we love the community, and we have had personally to date, nothing but the warmest embracing” from church community, neighbors and co-workers, Genth said.

As they tell their story, Swenson and Genth freely admit they have trepidation about doing so.



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Unitarians prepare to marry gays
Denomination set to 'make history'
By Michael Paulson, Globe Staff

At a time when many of the major religious denominations of the United States are riven by divisive debates over homosexuality, a small Boston-based denomination, the Unitarian Universalist Association, is preparing to supply ministers to officiate at large numbers of weddings of same-sex couples.

A Cambridge minister is going to City Hall as licenses are handed out to let gays and lesbians know she is ready to marry them. Three Unitarian Universalist congregations, two in Boston's Back Bay and one in Lexington, have placed ads in a gay weekly, Bay Windows, signaling their desire to perform gay weddings; one ad invites couples to "come make history."

On May 17, the day same-sex marriage becomes legal in Massachusetts, the denomination's president, the Rev. William G. Sinkford, will officiate at the wedding of Hillary and Julie Goodridge, the lead couple in the lawsuit that led to the state's Supreme Judicial Court ruling that the state cannot deny the benefits of civil marriage to same-sex couples. The Goodridge wedding is being held at the Unitarian Universalist Association's historic headquarters, 25 Beacon St., which overlooks the State House, where Governor Mitt Romney and various lawmakers have tried to block gay couples from getting married.

That same day, the senior minister of Arlington Street Church, a 275-year-old congregation whose members previously agitated on behalf of the emancipation of slaves and women's suffrage, plans to perform the wedding of another of the plaintiff couples, David Wilson and Robert Compton, on a live broadcast of ABC's "Nightline." A third plaintiff couple, Gloria Bailey and Linda Davies, is to be married that day at First Parish Brewster, a Unitarian Universalist congregation.