Police: Fight at Dillard may be result of hate crime
Sun-Sentinel


A fight that broke out at Dillard High School last month involving a gay student could be the result of a hate crime, Fort Lauderdale police said Monday.

The fight started May 11 after a boy at the school accused another student of propositioning his brother, police said.

Fort Lauderdale police said its criminal investigation division will pass along its findings to the State Attorney's Office within the next few days, department spokesman Detective Andy Pallen said Monday.

Police arrested 11 students and charged them with disturbing a school function. Ten of them also were charged with inciting a riot.


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'Rebel nun' with a gay and lesbian cause
BY ROBERT KAHN
STAFF WRITER


This is the story of a 61-year-old nun with inclinations toward Birkenstocks and Jane Fonda exercise videos, and a knack for incurring the concentrated fury of the Catholic hierarchy in Rome.

In 1977, Sister Jeannine Gramick - dubbed "the rebel nun" these days in the mainstream press - heeded a call from God and her conscience by co-founding a groundbreaking ministry for gay and lesbian Catholics outside Washington, D.C.

"You can't go against the cardinal," she recalls her elderly father telling her, when he learned what she had done.

"I was breaking the cardinal rule," she acknowledged to friends, with a resigned humor.


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New Paltz trustee to press bid to oust mayor
By Gabriel J. Wasserman
Poughkeepsie Journal


Armed with a judge's ruling against Mayor Jason West regarding same-sex marriages, village Trustee Robert Hebel and his legal team will launch efforts to remove West from office.

''He no longer deserves to represent the people,'' said Mathew Staver, lead counsel for the firm representing Hebel.

West dismissed the impeachment threat as a ''temper tantrum'' from Hebel.

In a ruling issued Monday, Ulster County Supreme Court Justice Michael Kavanagh barred West from performing similar marriages in the future.


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Araujo jury continues to deliberate
Jurors begin third day deciding murder case
By Ivan Delventhal, STAFF WRITER


HAYWARD -- An Alameda County jury weighing evidence in the trial of three men charged with murdering a transgender teenager in Newark in 2002 concluded a first full day of deliberations Monday without reaching a verdict.

Jury deliberations in the closely watched case began Thursday afternoon, following closing arguments in the trial. Court was not in session Friday, and the jury of eight men and four women deliberated from about 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday.

Michael Magidson of Fremont and Newark residents Jose Merel and Jason Cazares, all 24, are charged with murder and a hate-crime enhancement in the beating and strangling of the 17-year-old -- who was born Eddie Araujo but had been living as a young woman named Gwen at the time of the slaying.

The prosecution alleges that the men attacked Araujo on Oct. 4, 2002, upon learning that the teenager, whom they knew as a 19-year-old named Lida, was biologically male. Magidson and Merel had been sexually active with the teen, according to testimony.