Rice to open resource center for gays
Transgender, bisexual students can also get help
By LA MONICA and EVERETT-HAYNES
Copyright 2004 Houston Chronicle


Daniel Lenhoff wants to put Rice University on the map as a college that is openly welcoming to gays and lesbians. This fall, the private school will open its new lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender resource center, making Rice one of only a few U.S. colleges to house such an office.

"We wanted a place that was confidential, a place people could go to deal with questions about sexuality and not be afraid of being stigmatized," said Lenhoff, 21, a senior and co-president of Pride, Rice's gay and transgender student organization.

The center comes two years after an education journal printed a controversial comment by Rice's head football coach, Ken Hatfield.

In a 2002 edition of the Chronicle of Higher Education, Hatfield denounced homosexuality, sparking a campus debate and resulting in the creation of several gay and lesbian organizations.



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Gay bookstore awarded advanced costs in continuing fight against Canada Customs


VANCOUVER (CP) - A B.C. judge has ruled a Vancouver gay and lesbian bookstore can have advanced costs for its continuing fight against book seizures by Canada Customs.

"Our trial is the actually the only venue for review for Canada Customs," said Little Sister's Book and Art Emporium spokesman Mark Macdonald. "Thousands of books have been stopped going to Canadian importers.

"It affects Charter rights of every citizen in the country," he said. "It affects the rights of artists to spread their word and works of the imagination to their intended audience."

The book battle has gone on for almost 20 years and cost the store more than $750,000, Macdonald said.

The store is now fighting seizures of a series of adult comics entitled The Meatmen and two books edited by Larry Townsend: Of Slaves & Ropes & Lovers and Of Men, Ropes and Remembrance


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Local couple has joined lawsuit
By Richard Kendall, Daily Banner


CAMBRIDGE - Ryan Killough, 30, and Steven Palmer, 32, are paramedics for the city of Cambridge. They are also plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed in Baltimore by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

The case, Deane and Polyak vs. Conaway, will ask the Maryland Courts to determine the constitutionality of denying marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Nine couples, including Mr. Killough and Mr. Palmer, and one widowed man make up the body of plaintiffs in the case.

"The main thing I want people to understand is that we don't want any special rights, just equality," Mr. Killough said on Monday. "And, I would like people to know we are just like everyone else. We are not weird or bad people."

From the time he was 12 years old, Ryan Killough realized that he was not interested in the opposite sex. With his parents divorced, young Ryan, born in Elkton, moved to Dorchester County when he was 8 years old.



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Gay Marriage Case for Mass. Residents
JENNIFER PETER
Associated Press


BOSTON - The state's landmark gay marriage case applies only to Massachusetts residents and explicitly protects other states' rights to define marriage in their own way, according to a brief filed Monday by the attorney general.

A Suffolk County judge is scheduled to hear arguments Tuesday on a lawsuit filed by eight out-of-state gay couples who are seeking a preliminary injunction against a 1913 law that prohibits marriages that would be unlawful in a couple's home state.

Massachusetts Attorney General Thomas Reilly argues the couples' complaint ignores specific references to other states in last year's state Supreme Judicial Court decision that allowed gay marriage.

Language throughout that decision "recognizes that other states are entitled to reach their own conclusions about same-sex marriage," Reilly wrote.