Transgender substitute teacher hired; no audience comment

LITTLE EGG HARBOR — There was no public outcry this time.

Lily McBeth was one of several substitute teachers the Pinelands Regional Board of Education voted to hire Thursday night. None of the handful of local residents who attended the meeting spoke on the hiring of the 72-year-old transgender Little Egg Harbor woman.

It was a marked contrast to the scene at an Eagleswood Board of Education meeting last winter, where dozens of residents, both supporters and opponents of McBeth working in the district, turned out to speak after she was hired as a substitute there. The Eagleswood board did not back down from its decision to rehire McBeth, who had substituted at the elementary district before having a sex-change operation more than a year ago.

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Gay Iranian to be deported

A gay Iranian is to be deported from Sweden back to his homeland, a migration court in Stockholm decided on Friday. 

Gay rights group RFSL has condemned the decision, saying that the man could be executed on his return.
"They're choosing to send people back and just hope that things go well, and that they're not executed," said RFSL's chairman Sören Andersson to The Local.
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Man blames college attack on gay bias


MADISON, Wis. -- A former University of Wisconsin-Platteville student has filed a second lawsuit alleging he was attacked outside a restaurant because he is gay.

Brett Timmerman's lawsuit, filed in Grant County Circuit Court under Wisconsin's hate crimes law, seeks unspecified damages for emotional distress and attorney fees. A district court judge dismissed a federal suit in March.

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Church stand on gay priests made Tutu ashamed to be Anglican


JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (AP) — Archbishop Desmond Tutu, in the first authorized biography of the Nobel Peace laureate, said he was ashamed of his Anglican Church’s conservative position that rejected gay priests. Excerpts from the book, “Rabble-rouser for Peace” by his former press secretary John Allen, were scheduled to appear in South Africa on Sept. 22 and the biography was scheduled for release in time for Tutu’s 75th birthday on Oct. 7. The retired archbishop was critical of Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams for bowing on the gay priest issue to conservative elements, particularly African bishops, in the 77-million member Anglican Church that includes Episcopalians in the United States. In a 1998 letter to Williams’ predecessor, Archbishop George Carey, Tutu wrote he was “ashamed to be Anglican.” It came after the Lambeth Conference of Bishops rejected the ordination of practicing homosexuals saying their sexual relations were “incompatible with scripture.”