VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (AP) — A Navy tradition caught up with the repeal of the U.S. military’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell rule on Wednesday when two women sailors became the first to share the coveted “first kiss” on the dock after one of them returned from 80 days at sea. Petty Officer 2nd Class Marissa [...]
GENEVA — The Obama administration bluntly warned the world against gay and lesbian discrimination today, declaring the U.S. will use foreign assistance as well as diplomacy to back its insistence that gay rights are fully equal to other basic human rights. In unusually strong language, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton compared the struggle for [...]
WASHINGTON – The Obama administration is announcing a wide-ranging effort to use U.S. foreign aid to promote rights for gays and lesbians abroad, including combating attempts by foreign governments to criminalize homosexuality. In a memorandum issued Tuesday, President Barack Obama directed U.S. agencies working abroad, including the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International [...]
LAGOS, Nigeria — When a gang of men ambushed Rashidi Williams and a male friend earlier this year, the 25-year-old gay Nigerian was too afraid to report the attack to police or even to his family. Doing so would only create more problems, he says, in this country where legislators are now seeking to criminalize [...]
LOS ANGELES (AP) — A Southern California teenager who shot a gay classmate to death during a computer lab class three years ago avoided a retrial by pleading guilty to second-degree murder, a deal that will send him to prison for 21 years. Brandon McInerney, 17, pleaded guilty to the murder charge Monday, as well [...]
WASHINGTON (AP) — Increasingly visible, the number of gay Americans telling the U.S. census they’re living with same-sex partners nearly doubled in the past decade to about 650,000, and more than 130,000 of them recorded themselves as husband or wife. Census figures released Tuesday provide a rare snapshot of married and unmarried same-sex couples in [...]
WASHINGTON (AP) — Barbara Von Aspern loves her daughter, “thinks the world” of the person her daughter intends to marry and believes the pair should have the same legal rights as anyone else. It pains her, but Von Aspern is going to skip their wedding. Her daughter, Von Aspern explains, is marrying another woman. “We [...]
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — California’s same-sex marriage ban endured its latest legal test Tuesday as the state’s high court grilled attorneys on whether Proposition 8′s backers have legal authority to appeal a federal ruling that overturned the voter-approved measure. The tenor of the justices’ questioning during the more than hour-long hearing often leaned in favor [...]
LOS ANGELES (AP) There was no question that Brandon McInerney, who had just turned 14, shot a gay classmate at their middle school, but finding the appropriate degree of punishment proved to be troublesome this week for a jury that was inundated with factors to consider. They heard testimony that McInerney was beaten by his [...]
LOS ANGELES (AP) _ The English teacher of a gay student who was shot by a classmate at a junior high school testified Wednesday that she told him to stop wearing eyeliner and mascara, but that he refused and the classroom disruption escalated. Jill Ekman told jurors that 15-year-old Larry King wore even more makeup [...]