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February 13, 2009 GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE 5

newsbriefs

Two-day Columbus Pride will reverse parade route

Columbus In addition to changing its location and moving a week earlier, Columbus Pride is making another change this year: It's becoming a two-day event.

The festival will be held at Goodale Park in the Short North, traditionally the parade's stepoff point, because of construction at the downtown location of previous years. It will begin at 5 pm on Friday, June 19 and will run until 11 pm with food, exhibit booths and entertainment. The festival will continue Saturday morning at 11 am, running again until 11 pm.

The move to Goodale Park will essentially reverse the parade. It will step off from the Statehouse downtown at 1 pm on Saturday, making its way north to Goodale.

More information will be available at www.stonewallcolumbus.org.

Four held in center vandalism

Bay Shore, N.Y.-Police have arrested four people on charges of vandalizing a Long Island gay and lesbian youth center.

But while the incident was initially feared to be a hate crime, two of the people arrested are former clients.

Suffolk County police say 21-year-old Milagro Ruiz, 20-year-old Gilbert Geigel, 19year-old Kerrond Miller-Jones, and 21-year-old Charles Diaz, all of Bay Shore, were charged with second degree criminal mischief.

Police say vandals struck the Long Island Gay and Lesbian Youth Center in Bay Shore on Feb. 2.

They broke its front door, slashed tires and mangled side mirrors on the center's van.

"Over three years ago, two of the four people arrested were former clients of LIGALY," said the organization's CEO, David Kilmnick. "The individuals regularly displayed inappropriate and disruptive behavior toward staff and other clients. This behavior made many of our clients feel unsafe, and the organization responded appropriately by discharging them from our services."

"We are saddened to hear that the individuals arrested continued to act out in hatred and violence, as these attacks illustrate,” he concluded.

Police announced shortly after the arrests that it was no longer being investigated as a hate crime. They did not reveal the suspects' former association with the center, however Kilmnick did.

World's oldest gay bookstore to dose

New York City-The city's only remaining gay and lesbian bookstore is closing after 41 years.

Oscar Wilde Bookshop owner Kim Brinster says "tough times" are the reason for the Manhattan store's closing on March 29. She says the city once supported three gay and lesbian book-

stores.

In an e-mail message February 3, Brinster thanked customers for being part of "a great global community."

She says the Greenwich Village shop was a worldwide destination, with foreign tourists accounting for about two-thirds of its customers.

But she says business has been hurt by the decline in the euro's value and by large chain bookstores and the Internet.

The Oscar Wilde Bookshop bills itself as the world's oldest gay and lesbian bookstore. It's named after the gay Irish author.

The store nearly closed a few years ago due to mounting debts, until new owners took over. That influx of money, however, was not enough to save it in the long run.

Marriage bill would fall short in N.Y.

Albany, N.Y.-New York Senate Majority Leader Malcolm Smith says his Democratic conference lacks enough votes to legalize full same-sex marriage this year, but he's committed to passing a marriage bill soon.

Smith said in remarks prepared for the Human Rights Campaign New York banquet on February 7 in Manhattan that he strongly supports equal marital rights for gay couples.

But his confirmation that he lacks enough votes is likely a disappointment to gay civil rights advocates, who had hoped marriage would pass after Democrats took control of the Senate in the November elections.

Democratic Gov. David Paterson said he would sign a full marriage bill passed last year by the Democrat-controlled Assembly. But it was blocked by the Senate's former Republican majority.

Inheritance honors Canadian vows

New York City-A judge has issued New York state's first ruling that the survivor of a legal same-sex marriage is entitled to inherit a dead spouse's estate.

Manhattan Surrogate Court Judge Kristin Booth Glen ruled that J. Craig Leiby was "the surviving spouse" and sole heir of H. Kenneth Ranftle.

The judge said Leiby, 65, and Ranftle, 54, married in Montréal on June 7, 2008, after being together nearly 25 years. An obituary notice said Ranftle died of lung cancer in Leiby's arms on November 1, 2008.

The judge said marriages are recognized in New York if they are valid elsewhere and not specifically prohibited by state law or by "natural law," such as polygamy and incest. She found the Leiby-Ranftle marriage fell under neither exception.

Leiby's lawyer, Erica Bell, said Tuesday that the ruling determined her client was Ranftle's sole next of kin.

"This ruling implies, but does not say, if there had been no will, Leiby would (have inherited the estate)," she said.

Ranftle and Leiby lived and worked in New York City. Ranftle's three siblings did not oppose Leiby's probate petition of the multimillion-dollar estate, Bell said.

Gov. David Paterson last year directed state agencies to recognize same-sex marriages if they were valid where they were performed.

NJ. recognizes marriage to dissolve it

Trenton, N.J.—Same-sex marriages performed outside New Jersey are recognized in the state for the purpose of divorce, according to a February 6 ruling by a judge deciding whether a lesbian couple married in Canada can split.

The wider implications weren't immediately clear, but Superior Court Judge Mary Jacobson said New Jersey has a long history of recognizing marriages that are valid where they were performed.

The state doesn't let same-sex couples marry but does allow civil unions. The state Supreme Court has ruled that gay couples have the rights to the same legal standing as married heterosexual couples.

The women-La Kia Hammond of Trenton and Kinyati Hammond of New Castle, Del.were married in Victoria, British Columbia, in March 2004 and lived together in North East, Md. In 2005, La Kia, then 29, was found to have a terminal form of muscular dystrophy. She said doctors gave her two years to live.

About three years ago, she left Kinyati and moved with her daughter from a previous relationship to Trenton.

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to marry before she dies. But without a divorce that's recognized in Canada, her lawyer says, she cannot wed again there.

The lawyer, Stephen Hyland, said his client couldn't simply file for divorce in Canada because, while anyone may marry there, only residents can be granted divorces.

The New Jersey attorney general's office had opposed the request, the first of its kind in the state, and was seeking to have the couple's marriage dissolved as if it were a civil union. Officials have not said whether the state will seek an appeal.

Kinyati Hammond has not responded to the divorce legal filings.

Pioneering couple seeks divorce

Boston The lesbian couple who led the fight for same-sex marriage in Massachusetts are filing for divorce.

Julie and Hillary Goodridge were among seven couples whose lawsuit, Goodridge v. Department of Public Health, thrust Massachusetts into the center of a nationwide debate on gay marriage. The couple became the public face of the debate in the state, the first to legalize same-sex marriages.

The couple was married on May 17, 2004, the first day same-sex marriages became legal under a court ruling. Their daughter served as ringbearer.

The divorce filing is not unexpected. The couple announced they were separating in 2006. The case was filed January 29.

Was lesbian lawmaker kept off panel?

Jefferson City, Mo.-A state representative may have been denied a seat on the children and families committee because she is lesbian.

Rep. Jeanette Mott Oxford was nominated by her party as one of five appointments to the Special Standing Committee on Children and Families, but Republican House Speaker Ron Richard rejected her and chose a different Demo-

crat.

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"The only reason cited to me so far as for why I am not on the committee is that 'sorne members fine me offensive,' she wrote in a letter to Richard, according to the Kansas City Star. "I do not know if this is about my sexual orientation, my stance on Roe v. Wade, or what."

Rep. Michael Corcoran was given the position, and Richard said that he had earlier expressed an interest in the committee.

Corcoran supported Oxford for the position until it was clear that she was not going to be given a seat on the committee.

'Undetectable' HIV still found in semen

Montréal-The multi-drug therapy for treating HIV increases the life span of most people with the disease who take it, but it does not prevent them from passing it on to other people, researchers confirmed at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections.

While highly active anti-retroviral therapy, or HAART, can knock HIV presence in the bloodstream to undetectable levels, the virus still appears in semen.

Studies by Prameet Sheth of the University of

Toronto and Anne-Genevieve Marcellin of the Pitie-Salpetriere in Paris both reached the same conclusions.

According to Reuters, Sheth told the conference, "I would argue that it is infectious, although we don't know what level of virus is required."

Despite the possibility of the spread through semen even from men who have undetectable viral loads in their blood, the use of HAART may still lower overall transmissions on the population level.

Two other studies showed that some HIV drugs, used together or separately, might be usable as a prophylactic against infection.

Tests on monkeys used tenofovir and emtricitabine as gels and in pill form to see if its use would protect the monkeys from being infected with a simian virus similar to HIV, and the drugs worked in both forms. Human studies have not yet begun on pre-exposure prophylactic use of the drugs.

Wyoming kills ban amendment

Cheyenne, Wyo.-The Wyoming House of Representatives voted down a bill on February 6 that would have allowed state voters to decide whether to amend the state constitution to deny state recognition of same-sex marriages.

Supporters of the "Defense of Marriage Act" argued that passing it was necessary to reconcile conflicting state laws. But opponents said the bill was an assault on the rights of Wyoming gays and lesbians.

The bill, House Joint Resolution 17, died by a vote of 25-35 after an emotional debate on the House floor that lasted about an hour.

Rep. Owen Petersen, R-Mountain View, was the bill's main sponsor. He and his co-sponsors introduced it in the House after a similar measure stalled in the Senate last month.

Petersen said Wyoming law dating from the 1870s already specifies that marriages must be between a man and a woman. But state law also requires the recognition of marriages performed in other states, some of which allow same-sex couples, he said.

Rep. Pat Childers, R-Cody, urged the House to vote against the bill. He said he has a daughter in Montana who is gay. He said she isn't married to her partner because the law there doesn't allow it.

Childers said he grew up in Texas when it was still a segregated state. He said the marriage bill reminded him of the injustice he saw black people suffer in his youth.

Rep. Sue Wallis, R-Recluse, said it appeared that the anti-homosexual sentiment behind the bill was based on biblical interpretation. However, she said there are similar biblical admonitions against charging interest for a loan, sowing a field with mixed seed or eating shrimp.

Rather than calling the bill the "Defense of Marriage Act," Wallis said it should be called, "The Defense of State-Sponsored Religious Bigotry Act."

Compiled from wire reports by Brian De Witt, Anthony Glassman and Patti Harris.

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