GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE

Students

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Greater Cincinnati. "That is why we are working with both students and educators to improve the school climate in Southwest Ohio through our speakers bureau, Safe Space trainings and new youth group."

A month before the school climate survey was released, the U.S. Education Department issued an advisory to schools across the nation, warning them that it was illegal to ban gay-straight alliances from meeting on campus.

"The [Equal Access] Act requires public secondary schools to treat all student-initiated groups equally, regardless of the religious, political, philosophical, or other subject matters discussed at their meetings,”

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Education Secretary Arne Duncan wrote in the advisory. "Its protections apply to groups that address issues related to LGBT students and matters involving sexual orientation and gender identity, just as they apply to religious and other student groups."

He also noted that, "It is important to remember... that the Equal Access Act's requirements are a bare legal minimum. I invite and encourage you to go beyond what the law requires in order to increase students' sense of belonging in the school and help students, teachers, and parents recognize the core values behind our principles of free speech.”

Partners

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that it's not about whether or not benefits should happen, but about timing."

"It's not perfect, but it's a big step forward," he continued.

The domestic partner registry, which was passed by city council in 2008, took effect in May 2009. Later that year, the city added transgender people to its antidiscrimination ordinances.

The passage came just a day after the inner-ring suburb of East Cleveland unanimously passed a major expansion of its civil rights ordinances to include sexual orientation and gender identity and expression.

"There's a gap in state law regarding sexual orientation and gender identity, so these local ordinances fill that gap in a very important way," Rivera said.

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News Briefs

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Alvin McEwen, author of Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters: Exposing the Lies of the Anti-Gay Industry, noted that such misinterpretations of data are common among spokesmen for religious conservative organizations, and that researchers themselves have begun criticizing the abuse of their work.

Less than a year ago, the director of the Center for Science Writings at the Stevens Institute of Technology complained that religious organizations continue to misuse his article "Gay Genes, Revisited," in which he criticizes Dean Hamer's discovery of the "gay gene." John Horgan points out that he has repeatedly called Hamer to task for a simplistic, binary view of genes' functions and of human sexuality—either gay or straight. Horgan believes sexuality is more fluid than that.

The Senate committee hearing was on legislation to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act, which House speaker John Boehner has said he will not allow to come to a vote, regardless of whether the Senate passes it. President Barack Obama has endorsed the repeal.

First out gay federal judge confirmed

Washington, D.C.-The Senate on July 18 confirmed the first openly gay male federal judge, elevating former Clinton administration lawyer J. Paul Oetken to the bench in Manhattan.

The New York Times quoted Sen. Charles Schumer of New York saying, "When there are so many qualified.gay and lesbian people and none of them get on the bench, you scratch your head and wonder why. But the old barriers that existed in society are crumbling. That's what this will say."

Oetken was a law clerk for Justice Harry Blackmun of the Supreme Court, then went on to the Justice Department and served as associate counsel for Bill

Clinton. The 45-year-old Yale Law School graduate is a senior vice president and associate general counsel with Cablevision.

While Oetken is the first openly gay male judge assigned to the federal bench, Vaughn Walker, who ruled last year that California's Proposition 8 marriage ban is unconstitutional, came out publicly earlier this year, after he retired.

Deborah A. Batts, an out lesbian, has been on the federal bench in Manhattan since 1994.

Jury to be warned against 'gay panic'

Ventura, Calif.-Prosecutors will invoke a California law allowing judges to warn jurors against using a victim's sexual orientation in the case of Brandon McInerney, charged with killing a gay classmate in 2008.

The defense is saying that McInerney, then 14, was so humiliated by Larry King's flirtations that he was moved to shoot him in the head in the computer lab in their junior high school in Oxnard, California..

Termed a "gay panic" defense, its use following the 2002 murder of Gwen Araujo, a transgender teen, led to the California legislature passing a law in. 2006 allowing judges to admonish their juries against accepting the tactic.

Ventura County Senior Deputy District Attorney Maeve Fox said that she would bring forth the Araujo law when the jury goes into deliberations. The case is going into its fourth week.

Other students testified that King, 15, would blow kisses at McInerney, asked him to be his valentine, and yelled out in the hall, "I love you, baby," the day before McInerney pulled out a gun and shot him.

Compiled by Brian DeWitt, Anthony Glassman and Patti Harris.

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