"Gender identity" divides King County Council
By Keith Ervin
Seattle Times staff reporter


Metropolitan King County Council members yesterday delayed for two weeks a vote on County Executive Ron Sims' proposal to protect transsexuals and transvestites from discrimination.

In a proposed revamping of some 200 pages of existing ordinances, Sims also would apply existing equal-protection laws to the smallest of businesses in unincorporated King County.

Current laws apply only to businesses with eight or more employees.

The proposed amendments would prohibit government and businesses from discriminating on the basis of "gender identity" in housing, employment and public accommodations. Existing county laws prohibit discrimination based on race, gender, religion, national origin, age, marital status and sexual orientation


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Palestinian Tolerance
by Bret Stephens
THE JERUSALEM POST


A couple of months ago, the Associated Press published a series of pictures taken in the village of Kabatiya, near Jenin. They showed a Palestinian man being marched down a street by armed guards, then shot like a dog in the village square. Were the executioners Israeli? No. They were members of the Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, the military wing of Fatah, Yasser Arafat's political movement.

The victim was 45-year-old Muhammed Daraghmeh, accused of molesting his two daughters and collaborating with Israel. Was the accusation true? Who knows. Had the charge been proved by some kind of normal judicial procedure? It had not. Instead, the crowd chanted "death, death," the gunmen obliged, and the crowd cheered. More astonishing was that the gunmen invited the foreign press to record the scene. They were pleased with themselves, not ashamed.

Now consider the plight of Palestinian homosexuals. In August 2002, Yossi Klein Halevi wrote a piece in The New Republic which told the story of "Tayseer," a 21-year-old Gazan homosexual, who was lured to a tryst in an orange grove near his refugee camp. The next day he was summoned to the Palestinian police and told his partner of the day before was an informant. If Tayseer wanted to avoid prison, he had to become an informant. Tayseer refused.


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Protesters Against Adultery Clause March On Parliament


ANKARA, (AFP) - Waving banners and chanting slogans, about 400 demonstrators marched peacefully on the Turkish Parliament Tuesday to protest against proposed legislation to make adultery a criminal offense.

The demonstrators, mostly women, but also members of human and and gay rights groups, gathered on a warm, sunny day on a pedestrian street near the capital's ministries area before beginning their march on the nearby parliament, where deputies were to debate the bill from 3:00 p.m. (1200 GMT).


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Davis teen pleads guilty in vandalism of vehicles
Case sparked community outcry, but a hate-crime enhancement was dropped.
By Pamela Martineau -- Bee Staff Writer

A 17-year-old Davis youth has pleaded guilty to vandalizing six cars last October - one belonging to an African American family and another to an openly gay man - in an egging spree that sparked community outcry and was initially charged as a hate crime, according to one of the attorneys in the case.


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Scotty's last moments
The murder of a gay teen—allegedly at the hands of his best friends—has rattled a small Alabama town
By Jen Christensen
From The Advocate,


Talk to the people in rural Pine Grove, Ala., who knew Scotty Joe Weaver and they’ll tell you one thing: The 18-year-old seemed to survive anything life threw at him.

At age 10 he fought off cancer through two grueling years of chemotherapy. At 15 he lost his father. Throughout his high school years in the nearby town of Bay Minette, he weathered the taunts and teases of classmates for being gay. “He always knew how to get through,” remembers his friend Justin Toth, who is also gay. “He had fun even at the worst times in his life.”

This time, however, Weaver did not survive.


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Gay Students Offered Special Scholarships
By LISA LEFF
Associated Press Writer
BERKELEY, Calif.


Alyn Libman won a $15,000-a-year scholarship to the University of California at Berkeley with a resume that showed more than just Libman's athletic achievement and academic potential.

It also showed years of ridicule, beatings and threats, along with Libman's decision to become a boy in 11th grade.


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Massachusetts Schools Weigh Gay Topics
All Things Considered audio
Sept. 13, 2004


As school begins in Massachusetts, teachers and parents are debating what to teach about homosexuality now that gay marriage is legal. Some say teachers must talk more openly about gay relationships, while others say they'd rather quit than assign books such as Heather Has Two Mommies. NPR's Tovia Smith reports.


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LGBT-trained resident advisers nearly double
Initiative to put LGBT resource person in every dorm began three years ago.
By Brendan Hedges


The number of resident advisers volunteering for the Office for Residential Education's program to place RAs sensitive to gay and lesbian issues in USC housing has nearly doubled.

In their first meeting this semester, almost 35 RAs participated in awareness-raising exercises, said Vincent Vigil, coordinator of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Resource Center, which conducted the training workshop in mid-August.