650 walk, roll and bike in city's first disability pride parade
BY JIM RITTER Health Reporter


The turnout was bigger than expected Sunday for the first International Disability Pride Parade in Chicago.

About 650 people from 60 groups walked, if they could, or rode in cars, wheelchairs, scooters and hand-pedaled recumbent bikes.

Organizers had hoped for 500 participants.

But politicians, who generally love parades, didn't join them on their march to Soldier Field from the starting line west of Adler Planetarium.

"This is history in the making, and they're missing it," said parade co-chairwoman Susan Triano. "They're also missing a voting bloc.".


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When gay taunts become bullying, schools must act


School bullying can take many forms, all of them ugly. Pupils can be picked on because of their race, their appearance, their size, their disability - and also their sexuality. Education Correspondent Mike Russell visited a Sheffield comprehensive where the issue of homophobic bullying is being taken very seriously indeed

MILLIONS watched as Coronation Street's Todd Grimshaw agonised over whether to come out as a gay teenager in the most avidly watched soap plotline of recent times.

When he finally took the plunge his community was divided - while his close family were supportive, Todd faced abuse from many friends and neighbours.

Young gay people - whether 'out' or not - can face similar hostility at school, yet too many secondaries refuse to directly address the issue.


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Bishop Wants To Ban Gays
 

Fort Wayne bishop wants gays banned from priesthood. 

A Roman Catholic bishop from Indiana says the church must improve its screening process for accepting seminarians to keep homosexuals from being ordained into the priesthood. Bishop John D'Arcy of Fort Wayne and South Bend made the comments in the Boston Globe. D'Arcy is from Boston and was there over the weekend. He says he hopes the US Conference of Catholic Bishops will discuss screening policies for seminaries when it meets this fall and will take a firm stance against homosexual men serving as priests. D'Arcy says that while only heterosexual men should be allowed to become priests, they must embrace celibacy. He says priests with the right temperament for the job will attract more good men to work for the church


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Boy Scout Council Fails To Adopt Pro-LGTB Policies


PHILADELPHIA, PA—The Boy Scouts of America’s Cradle of Liberty Council retains its offices in Philadelphia, despite promises by the city last year to revoke the group’s lease if it didn’t drop discriminatory policies toward LGTB members, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported Wednesday.

The Cradle of Liberty Council, which expelled a Scout for announcing he was gay at last year’s convention, saw its funding revoked by two major local sponsors, the United Way of Southeastern Pennsylvania and the Pew Charitable Trusts. The city followed suit with City Solicitor Nelson A. Diaz declaring the Boy Scouts in violation of a municipal fair-practices ordinance; the penalty, the city claimed, would be the revocation of the Council’s rent-free lease of city property.

“It is a concern of ours that an organization that benefits from the city continues to have a discriminatory policy,” Stacey L. Sobel of Philadelphia’s Center for Lesbian and Gay Civil Rights told the Philadelphia Inquirer. “It’s our hope that one day the Boy Scouts will accept all people who would like to participate in its activities, regardless of sexual orientation.”