Girl attacked for 'lesbian' T-shirt
Ben Townley, Gay.com UK

A girl was brutally attacked after being challenged over a T-shirt bearing a lesbian slogan, a court has heard.

Simone Gibson says she was beaten up in Teeside after being approached by Mark Smorthwaite, who apparently took offence to the shirt bearing the motto "Nobody Knows I'm A Lesbian".

She says that the 32-year-old man, who has admitted being drunk at the time, asked her about her sexuality then hit her in the face. After she fell to the floor, he kicked her, Ms Gibson claims. Whether she is actually a lesbian has not been confirmed.

Mr Smorthwaite says he does not remember the incident, which took place on December 6th last year. He told police officers at the scene that he was "very drunk" and must have been provoked by Ms Gibson and her friend Stephen Holmes to have attacked her.


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Catholic Church may dump gay employees who marry
By Eric Convey


Catholic church leaders across the state are considering rewriting employment policies in the wake of legalized gay marriage and may go so far as to call for the firing of church workers who tie the knot with same-sex partners.
   
  The proposed new policies - which also include a more lenient proposal to let employees follow their own consciences - are articulated in memos circulating among the state's four bishops and their staffs. No decision on which policy to embrace is imminent, said several people who have seen the documents.
  
   The Rev. Christopher J. Coyne, spokesman for the Archdiocese of Boston, said there have been ``discussions about it. It's obviously a very volatile issue.''

     Another church official speaking on condition he not be identified said church officials believe the issue deserves debate because getting married ``falls in the category of employees' public behavior.''


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Gay marriage furor expected to rekindle
By KAREN TESTA, Associate Press writer

BOSTON -- For a month now, hundreds of gay couples have gotten married in Massachusetts with remarkably little fanfare or protest. But the honeymoon is about to end.

Gay-marriage opponents are targeting the Legislature this fall, when all 200 seats are up for election. They want to see passage of a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage.

"The people who are in favor of marriage, the traditional definition of it, we still haven't given up," said Michael Carl, president of a political action committee to support candidates who oppose gay marriage and civil unions.

On the other side of the issue, gay-marriage supporters plan to mount a legal challenge any day now to the 1913 law that Gov. Mitt Romney has used to block out-of-state couples from exchanging vows in Massachusetts.


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Critics: GOP not hands-off on gay marriage
5th District race illustrates party's conflict with its normal position on states' rights
By Theo Helm
JOURNAL REPORTER

Many Republicans have traditionally said they would rather leave more decisions to the states, not the federal government.

But not when it comes to gay marriage.

That change is clear in the 5th Congressional District, where all the Republican candidates support a constitutional amendment defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman.

That comes even though most of them - including Ed Broyhill, state Sen. Virginia Foxx, Jay Helvey, Winston-Salem City Council Member Vernon Robinson and Nathan Tabor - consider themselves pro-states' rights./a>


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Gay marriage bans clear lower house
(AU)


The federal government's controversial plans to ban gay couples from marrying and adopting children from overseas were passed by parliament's lower house.

After a heated debate, the government used its numbers to defeat a series of amendments proposed by Labor and get the legislation passed.

The legislation will now be debated in the Senate.

Labor had strongly opposed the ban on gay couples adopting children from overseas in the Marriage Legislation Amendment Bill 2004.


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1913 law center of gay marriage battle
By LISA MARIE PANE
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

BOSTON -- A 1913 law that went virtually unnoticed for almost a century may take center stage in the battle over gay marriage in Massachusetts.

The law prohibits clerks from issuing licenses to couples if the marriage would not be legal in their home state.

After the state's Supreme Judicial Court ruled in November that same-sex couples had a right to marry, Gov. Mitt Romney used the 1913 law to block out-of-state couples from exchanging vows in Massachusetts.

Gay rights advocates contend the law is unconstitutional. They also said it's discriminatory to enforce it against gay couples when heterosexual couples from out-of-state were rarely, if ever, challenged over the past several decades.


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Lover Cop Now Prime Suspect In College Student's Murder 
by 365Gay.com Newscenter Staff


(Columbia, Missouri) A married Columbia police officer who was having a secret affair with a gay college student is now the prime in his murder.

The body of 23 year old Jesse Valencia was discovered June 6 on the lawn of a home about a block from his apartment near the campus of the University of Missouri-Columbia.  An autopsy showed that his throat had been slashed.

The last time anyone saw him was about 3:30 the previous morning as he left a party off campus.

Shortly after the investigation into the killing began friends of Valencia said he was having a secret affair with a police officer. The friends told homicide investigators that the officer had arrested Valencia on April 18 for interfering with officers responding to a peace disturbance in the area. The friends said the officer then started visiting Valencia’s apartment.