Police on eastern Long Island say they have arrested three people on aggravated harassment charges after they kicked and hit a victim while uttering anti-gay remarks. Authorities say 21-year-old Nora Mitzner and 25-year-old Lindsay McBeth and 20-year-old Selwyn Icangelo pleaded not guilty at their arraignments in First District Court in Central Islip on Tuesday. McBeth did not have an attorney and Mitzner was represented by Legal Aid, which does not comment on pending cases. Icangelo’s attorney did not immediately return a call for comment.

Read the full story from Newsday.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates says the Pentagon is searching for ways to make the ban on gays serving openly in the military more flexible. A transcript released by the Pentagon shows Gates is looking at several options that would make the military’s policy “more humane,” CNN reported Wednesday. The defense secretary said one of the things they’re considering is letting people continue to serve who may have been outed due to vengeance or a jilted lover.

Read the full story from UPI.

Military authorities are investigating the death of a Camp Pendleton-based sailor found in a guard shack, and local gay activists said it may have been a hate-crime slaying at the hands of a fellow serviceman. August Provost of Houston, Texas, was found dead on the western side of the North County Marine Corps base about 3:30 a.m. Tuesday, said Doug Sayers, a spokesman for Navy Region Southwest. Investigators consider the death of the 29-year-old boatswain’s mate a possible homicide, though a final determination is on hold pending autopsy results, Sayers said.

Read the full story from San Diego 6.

An Indian court ruled gay sex between consenting adults was not a crime, ordering that the rights of citizens were violated by parts of a 150-year-old colonial-era law that made it illegal. “We declare that section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, in so far as it criminalizes consensual acts of others in private,” runs counter to basic human rights guaranteed by articles of the Indian constitution, Chief Justice A.P. Shah of the Delhi High Court said in a ruling. Section 377, drafted by British rulers in 1860, has drawn criticism from public health activists as a barrier in the fight against HIV/AIDS. Parts of the law will continue to apply to forms of non-consensual sex, the ruling said.

Read the full story from Bloomberg.

 

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Today’s Top Five Headlines

White House Not Appealing Transgender Ruling
Army Board Tells Gay Soldier, ‘Dismissed’
Wisconsin Budget Funds Domestic Partnerships
Uganda to Fight Donor Pressure on Gay Rights
Judge Favors Prop 8 Trial Soon

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The Obama administration is not fighting a nearly $500,000 judgment for a Library of Congress hiree who lost the job while undergoing a gender change from a man to a woman. The Justice Department let the deadline to appeal the decision pass Tuesday, a day after President Barack Obama hosted gay supporters at the White House and promised to be their “champion.” Some activists have complained he has not led on their causes, including ending the ban on gays in the military. Diane Schroer, a retired Army Special Forces commander from Alexandria, Va., had been offered a job at the Library of Congress when he was a man, David Schroer. The job was rescinded the day after Schroer told a library official he was going to have an operation to become a woman.

Read the full story from the Associated Press.

With the budget signed Monday by Gov. Jim Doyle, Wisconsin has become the first state with a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage and civil unions to put in place domestic partnerships for same-sex couples. Wisconsin is also the first Midwestern state to legislatively put in place legal protections for same-sex couples. But supporters of the ban still contend it violates the constitutional amendment on marriage because it creates a legal status that approximates marriage and could file a legal challenge soon. Starting Aug. 1, couples will be able to apply for a declaration of domestic partnership with their county of residence and would pay a vital records fee for processing the paperwork. Partnerships will be dissolved through a termination process at the county clerk’s office.

Read the full story from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Uganda will resist pressures from donor countries to soften its stance on homosexuality and plans to pass a new law that significantly clamps down on gay rights, a minister said Wednesday. “I have been receiving a number of friends from outside Uganda telling me that we should go slow on the rights of people who promote anal sex,” Ethics Minister James Nsaba Buturo said. “And I’m telling them, ‘well, if you in your countries you’ve chosen to promote anal sex that is your business but leave us alone.”

Read the full story from AFP.

A federal judge wants a trial on California’s same-sex marriage ban to proceed quickly but says he likely won’t suspend the voter-approved ban in the meantime. U.S. District Court Chief Judge Vaughn Walker said holding a speedy trial on the merits of a lawsuit challenging Proposition 8 would avoid novel issues that might be raised if he issued a temporary injunction. A hearing on the injunction had been scheduled for Thursday. But in his tentative order Tuesday, the judge proposed using the time instead for setting a trial schedule.

Read the full story from Forbes.

A U.S. Army board recommended dismissal for Lt. Daniel Choi, a West Point graduate who stands to become the first New York National Guard member discharged under the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. A panel of four officers reviewed the case for more than eight hours on Tuesday in a closed hearing at Hancock Air Base in Syracuse. Their decision asserts that Choi, a platoon leader with the 69th Infantry Regiment out of Manhattan, violated a federal statute that forbids homosexual soldiers from serving openly in the military. Choi, 28, of New York City, graduated from the U.S. Military Academy in 2003 and joined the 10th Mountain Division at Fort Drum. He spent 15 months in Iraq as an Arabic interpreter and joined the Guard in June 2007.

Read the full story from the Times-Herald Record.

 

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Today’s Top Headlines

Obama Holds Reception with Gay Leaders
Demonstrators Protest Police Raid on Texas Gay Bar
Labor Secretary Denounces Gay Pride Poster Vandals
Gay Marriage Stalls as RI Lawmakers Wrap Up
India Faith Leaders: Anti-Gay Law Must Stay

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Labor Secretary Hilda Solis is denouncing vandals who defaced many of the gay pride posters installed at the agency’s Washington headquarters. Solis, the first secretary in the department’s history to publicly recognize Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Pride Month, sent an agency-wide e-mail last Friday saying she would not tolerate anti-gay misconduct. “It appears, however, that some members of the Labor Department team have a different view, as it has come to my attention that most of the posters have been continually defaced or removed,” Solis said. “On several occasions, even the poster frames have been torn completely off the elevator walls.”

Read the full story from the Associated Press.

President Obama isn’t giving gay rights activists any of the major legislation they want so far. But he is giving them some face time at the White House this afternoon. The administration invited 250 leaders of the gay community to a commemoration of the 40th anniversary of the birth of the gay rights movement — the protests that followed a police raid of the Stonewall Inn gay bar in New York. But despite campaign promises that activists saw as pledges of quick action, Obama has put on the back burner bills to rescind the 1993 “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that prevents homosexuals from serving openly in the military and to overturn the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act that defines marriage as between men and women and allows states to ignore gay marriages performed in other states.

Read the full story from the Boston Globe.

A crowd of more than 100 protesters chanted “No more!” from the steps of the Tarrant County Courthouse on Sunday evening as they demanded an investigation of a police raid that happened hours earlier at a gay nightclub. One patron was seriously injured during the raid at the Rainbow Lounge, which resulted in the arrests of seven people, protesters said. Speaker after speaker decried what they called excessive force during the raid, an accusation that police dispute. “I was scared,” said Todd Camp, a former Star-Telegram writer who helped organize the protest. “I have never seen anything like this in my life.”

Read the full story from the Star-Telegram.