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Today’s Headline
Anglican Church Split Widens

WASHINGTON (AP)

More conservative Anglican leaders from overseas are building up a presence in the United States to counter the liberal-leaning U.S. Episcopal Church on its home turf.

The Anglican Church of Uganda plans to appoint a former Episcopal priest as an assistant bishop to oversee its American congregations. The Rev. John Guernsey of Virginia will be consecrated Sept. 2 in Uganda, according to the Most. Rev. Henry Orombi, head of the Ugandan province. The date of his installation in the United States has not been released.

Separately, the Most Rev. Benjamin Nzimbi of the Anglican Church of Kenya plans an Aug. 30 consecration of Canon (nyse: CAJ – news – people ) Bill Atwood to oversee breakaway U.S. parishes that have affiliated with the Kenyan church.

And last May, Nigerian Archbishop Peter Akinola installed Bishop Martyn Minns, a former Episcopal priest, to lead the Convocation of Anglicans in North America, a group of breakaway U.S. parishes aligned with the Nigerian church.

Episcopal leaders have protested the moves, saying the incursions violate a long-standing Anglican tradition that leaders manage parishes only in their own provinces. The 2.3 million-member Episcopal Church is the Anglican body in the U.S.

But theological conservatives say desperate measures are needed because of the liberal drift of the Episcopal Church, including the 2003 consecration of the first openly gay bishop, V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire.

The 77 million-member Anglican Communion is a fellowship of churches that trace their roots to the Church of England. The number of Episcopal parishes that have left to align with an overseas leader is in dispute. Conservatives say the number is in the hundreds, while Episcopal leaders say the figure is closer to 45.

 

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Today’s Headlines
Moscow Police Detains Gay Activists
Former Ex-Gay Ministry Leaders Apologize
Public Says Sexuality is Predetermined

ATLANTA, June 28 (UPI)

A new poll shows 56 percent of people in the United States don’t believe a person can change their sexual orientation. The results of the latest CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey compares to 2001 when 45 percent said orientation couldn’t change. In 1998, 36 percent held that belief, CNN said Wednesday. The margin of error is plus or minus 4.5 percentage points. CNN said a growing number of psychologists and geneticists are working on the nature versus nurture question about whether people choose to be gay, or whether sexual orientation is determined by their DNA.

Copyright 2007 by United Press International

LOS ANGELES, (AP)

Three former leaders of a ministry that counsels gays to change their sexual orientation apologized, saying although they acted sincerely, their message had caused isolation, shame and fear.

The former leaders of the interdenominational Christian organization Exodus International said Wednesday they had become disillusioned with promoting gay conversion.

“Some who heard our message were compelled to try to change an integral part of themselves, bringing harm to themselves and their families,” the three said in a statement released outside the Los Angeles Gay & Lesbian Center.

The statement was from former Exodus co-founder Michael Bussee, who left the group in 1979, Jeremy Marks, former president of Exodus International Europe, and Darlene Bogle, the founder of Paraklete Ministries, an Exodus referral agency.

The statement coincided with the opening of Exodus’ annual conference, which is being held this week at Concordia University in Irvine.

Exodus’ president, Alan Chambers, said the ministry’s methods have helped many people, including himself.

“Exodus is here for people who want an alternative to homosexuality,” Chambers said by phone. “There are thousands of people like me who have overcome this. I think there’s room for more than one opinion on this subject, and giving people options isn’t dangerous.”

Founded in 1976, the Orlando, Fla.-based Exodus has grown to include more than 120 ministries in the United States and Canada and over 150 ministries overseas. It promotes “freedom from homosexuality” through prayer, counseling and group therapy.

___

On the Net:

Exodus International:

Los Angeles Gay & Lesbian Center,

http://exodus.to/

www.lagaycenter.org/

MOSCOW (AP)

Police blocked gay rights activists from holding a demonstration in the capital Wednesday and detained two of them despite the protest being authorized by city authorities.

The approximately two dozen activists aimed to hold the rally outside the European Union’s representative office in Moscow to demand that the EU impose a visa ban on Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, who has banned gay rights parades and called homosexuality “satanic.”

Although the planned demonstration had been sanctioned, police said they decided to block it because it would interfere with construction taking place nearby.

“Authorities in Moscow have broken the law again by not allowing our picket,” said activist Alexey Davydov.

Demonstrators tried to unfurl a banner, but police dispersed them, grabbing Davydov and another demonstrator and forcing them into a police bus.

A group of gay rights opponents stood nearby, but did not interfere.

“There must be no propaganda of sexual perversions in Russia, especially if it is Western-funded,” said Mikhail Sinitsyn, leader of the nationalistic People’s Union youth movement.

Russia decriminalized homosexuality in 1993, but opposition to gay rights remains strong and frequently turns violent.

In May, police detained gay rights activists, including two European lawmakers, as they tried to hold a demonstration in downtown Moscow while members of a hostile crowd punched the activists and pelted them with eggs.

Homosexuality is denounced by the dominant Russian Orthodox Church, and President Vladimir Putin in his annual news conference implied gays were undermining the country by not having children.

 

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Today’s Headlines
Defrocked Pastor Becomes Unlikely Hero
MA Inmates Asks for Sex Change
Elizabeth Edwards Asks Coulter to Stop Attacks

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP)

Elizabeth Edwards pleaded Tuesday with Ann Coulter to “stop the personal attacks,” a day after the conservative commentator said she wished Edwards’ husband, Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, had been killed by terrorists.

“The things she has said over the years, not just about John but about other candidates, lowers the political dialogue at precisely the time we need to raise it,” Edwards said by phone on MSNBC’s “Hardball” program, where Coulter was a guest.

Elizabeth Edwards said she did not consult her husband before confronting Coulter on the air, adding that she felt the pundit’s remarks were “a dialogue on hatefulness and ugliness.”

“It debases political dialogue,” Edwards said. “It drives people away from the process. We can’t have a debate about issues if you’re using this kind of language.”

Coulter responded with a laugh and charged that Edwards was calling on her to stop speaking altogether. She questioned why Elizabeth Edwards was making a phone call on behalf of her husband, and she criticized John Edwards for “stealing doctors’ money” during his successful career as a trial lawyer.

“I don’t think I need to be told to stop writing by Elizabeth Edwards, thank you,” Coulter said.

On ABC’s “Good Morning America” on Monday, Coulter was asked about a March speech in which she used a gay slur to refer to Edwards.

“If I’m going to say anything about John Edwards in the future, I’ll just wish he had been killed in a terrorist assassination plot,” Coulter said Monday, picking up on remarks made by HBO’s Bill Maher. Maher suggested in March that “people wouldn’t be dying needlessly” if Vice President Dick Cheney had been killed in an insurgent attack in Afghanistan.

BOSTON (AP)

A trial that opened more than a year ago has become bogged down in Boston federal court. There have been hundreds of hours of testimony from witnesses, including 10 medical specialists paid tens of thousands of dollars. The judge himself even hired an expert to help him make sense of it all.

The question at the center of the case: Should a murderer serving life in prison get a sex-change operation at taxpayer expense?

The case of Michelle – formerly Robert – Kosilek is being closely watched across the country by advocates for other inmates who want to undergo a sex change. Transgender inmates in other states have sued prison officials, and not one has succeeded in persuading a judge to order a sex-change operation.

The Massachusetts Correction Department is vigorously fighting Kosilek’s request for surgery, saying it would create a security nightmare and make Kosilek a target for sexual assault.

An Associated Press review of the case, including figures obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests and interviews, found that the Correction Department and its outside health care provider have spent more than $52,000 on experts to testify about an operation that would cost about $20,000.

The duration and expense of the case have outraged some lawmakers who insist that taxpayers should not have to pay for inmates to have surgery that most private insurers reject as elective.

“They are prisoners. They are there because they’ve broken the law,” said Republican state Sen. Scott Brown, who unsuccessfully introduced a bill to ban sex-change surgery for inmates. “Other folks, people who want to get these types of surgeries, they have to go through their insurance carrier or save up for it and do it independently. Yet if you are in prison, you can do it for nothing? That doesn’t make a lot of sense.”

But advocates say in some cases – such as that of Kosilek, who has twice attempted suicide – sex-change surgery is as much a medical necessity as treatment for diabetes or high blood pressure.

“The duty belongs to the prison to figure out how to fulfill its constitutional obligations to both provide adequate medical care and provide a fundamental security for all inmates,” said Cole Thaler, an attorney with Lambda Legal, a gay- and transgender-rights group.

Kosilek, 58, was convicted of strangling his wife in 1990. He claimed he killed her in self-defense after she spilled boiling tea on his genitals.

Robert Kosilek legally changed his name to Michelle in 1993, and has sued the Correction Department twice, arguing that its refusal to allow a sex-change operation violates the Eighth Amendment protection against cruel and unusual punishment.

In 2002, U.S. District Judge Mark Wolf ruled that Kosilek was entitled to medical treatment for gender identity disorder, but stopped short of ordering the surgery. Kosilek sued again in 2005, arguing that the hormone treatments, laser hair removal and psychotherapy she has received since Wolf’s ruling have not relieved her anxiety and depression.

“I would not want to continue existing like this,” Kosilek testified.

Kosilek’s second trial, which began in May 2006, has featured expert testimony from 10 doctors, psychiatrists and psychotherapists. Wolf has not indicated when he will rule.

The Correction Department has spent about $33,000 on two experts it retained to evaluate Kosilek. Both Cynthia Osborne, a Baltimore psychotherapist, and Chester Schmidt, a psychiatry professor at Johns Hopkins University, said Kosilek does not need the surgery. Schmidt’s fee alone was $350 per hour.

Two other doctors retained and paid for by the department’s outside health provider, the University of Massachusetts Correctional Health Program, at a cost of just under $19,000 said they believe the surgery is medically necessary for Kosilek. Two other doctors who work for the health provider agreed with that.

In addition, two psychiatrists who testified for Kosilek recommended the surgery. A Boston law firm representing Kosilek for free paid for those experts but would not disclose the cost.

In Wisconsin, five inmates sued after the Legislature passed a law that bars Correction Department funding for hormone treatments or sex-change surgery. The case is expected to go to trial in October.

Those who argue against allowing the surgery say it could open the floodgates to other inmates who want sex-change operations or other treatments considered elective.

In Massachusetts, 10 inmates have been diagnosed with gender identity disorder and are receiving hormone treatments. Two other inmates besides Kosilek have asked for sex-change surgery.

Corrections officials say their decision to deny the surgery has nothing to do with costs or the politics of crime. They cite the testimony of their experts and Kosilek herself that her feelings of depression have diminished since she began taking hormones.

Former Commissioner Kathleen Dennehy testified that allowing Kosilek to complete the transformation into a woman would present a security problem. Whether she stays in a male prison or is transferred to a female prison, she could become a target for sexual assault, Dennehy testified.

Dennehy also said prison officials cannot be influenced by Kosilek’s talk of suicide.

“The department does not negotiate or respond to threats of harm or suicide in an effort to barter,” she said. “You couldn’t run a prison with that kind of leveraging going on.”

ATLANTA (AP)

The tattered cloth scraps started arriving at St. John’s Lutheran Church shortly after the Rev. Bradley Schmeling took his stand against the church hierarchy, each with an embroidered or drawn message of support.

“God is with you. Make fire in Atlanta,” reads one of the hundreds of prayer cloths. “All love is holy,” says another.

Schmeling’s refusal last year to resign after telling a church bishop he was in a gay relationship has earned him quite a following.

More than 1,000 supporters joined an online prayer vigil to back Schmeling while a disciplinary committee was making its decision to defrock him and order him to vacate his pulpit by Aug. 15. He’s appealing the order.

Since the panel’s ruling, his congregation’s membership has spiked and he came in fourth in the election for the region’s next Lutheran bishop. He was even chosen grand marshal for Sunday’s annual gay pride parade in Atlanta, one of the nation’s largest gay pride festivals.

“I’m a little embarrassed by all the attention,” he said Saturday. “But I feel like it’s a chance for me to witness for a church that’s open, accepting and loving to everyone. So many churches have only harsh and negative words for gay and lesbian people.”

He said that when he became pastor of St. John’s seven years ago his gay lifestyle was no secret to the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. He was single then, and he said he told Bishop Ronald Warren he’d come forward if his situation changed.

The change came in March 2006, when Schmeling decided his relationship with his boyfriend had become a lifelong partnership. He told Warren and the bishop promptly asked him to resign.

Warren called a disciplinary hearing, and the 12-member committee decided that church rules left them no choice but to defrock Schmeling and order him out of the pulpit. The denomination’s policy excludes gay, bisexual andtransgender persons in relationships from the ordained ministry.

However, the committee also angered Warren by suggesting that the church consider reinstating gay clergy forced to step down because of their relationships. It said that, aside from his relationship, Schmeling has proved he is worthy of his title.

The ELCA could consider making such a change at its churchwide assembly starting Aug. 6 in Chicago. Church leaders will meet this week to sort through 119 proposals, and roughly half are related to gay and lesbian matters, said John Brooks, an ELCA spokesman.

“I know of proposals that have come forth arguing the church should change itspolicy, others saying they don’t want a change in policy and others saying we shouldn’t deal with this at all,” he said. “The church is certainly not of one mind on this.”

Schmeling won’t predict what will happen.

“We’re still praying that the church will do the right thing and change the policy. If not, we haven’t wanted to speculate,” Schmeling said. “That’s what this process is teaching us: How to live in the moment.”

His congregation has stood by him during the dispute.

“From the beginning, the congregation has been very supportive of him _ and wanting the church to be inclusive of all people,” said Barbara Arne, a 25-year member ofthe congregation who led the committee that selected Schmeling seven years ago.

“Just based on our own congregation, it’s quite clear to me that there’s a great need for Schmeling’s message,” she said. “We’ve had a lot of members that have been very badly hurt by the church, and you’d like to think the church is a place you can turn to for support, no matter who you are.”

At a meeting of southeastern Lutheran leaders in Atlanta this month, Schmeling joined about 60 colleagues in an election to replace the bishop, who is retiring.

“I told them I yearn for a church that’s accepting to everyone,” Schmeling recalls. “And I hope for a church thatcould be a model for remaining united even in the face of deep disagreement.”

After his surprising fourth-place finish in that election, he said he’s now more confident than he was a few months ago.

“I pray the change in policy will come this summer,” he says. “But if it doesn’t, I know it will come one day.”

___

On the Net:

St. John’s Lutheran Church: http://www.stjohnsatlanta.org/

Evangelical Lutheran Church in America: http://www.elca.org/

Copyright 2007 by the Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.

 

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Today’s Headlines
Fired Worker Sues CBS Alleging Gay Bias
District Sorry for Censoring Gay Kiss

Newark, N.J. (AP)

The school district said Monday it regretted ordering a picture of a male student kissing his boyfriend blacked out from all copies of a high school yearbook and said it apologized to the student.

Andre Jackson, the student, said he was disappointed that the superintendent had not delivered the apology face-to-face and in public. Because of that, he said he didn’t accept it as sincere.

“I would accept an apology — a public apology,” said Jackson, 18.

Jackson said he learned of the apology through the media.

The district issued a statement Monday saying it regretted the decision and that it would issue an unredacted version of the yearbook to any student of East Side High School who wants one.

“The decision was based, in part, on misinformation that Mr. Jackson was not one of our students and our review simply focused on the suggestive nature of the photograph,” the district said.

“Superintendent Marion A. Bolden personally apologizes to Mr. Jackson and regrets any embarrassment and unwanted attention the matter has brought to him.”

District spokeswoman Valerie Merritt said Bolden would meet with Jackson on Tuesday.

But Steven Goldstein, chairman of the gay rights group Garden State Equality, said Jackson had not heard from the district by 10 p.m. Monday.

“They don’t have a meeting set up, it’s not true,” Goldstein said. “The school district hasn’t contacted him. Whether they reach out to him on Tuesday remains to be seen.”

Jackson said his teachers, classmates and his parents all knew he was gay and that his sexual orientation was never a problem at school.

“I’ve never had to deal with this before,” he said. “It’s shocking. It’s crazy.”

Previously, Bolden had described the picture, which showed Jackson kissing boyfriend David Escobales, as “illicit.”

“If it was either heterosexual or gay, it should have been blacked out. It’s how they posed for the picture,” Bolden told The Star-Ledger of Newark for Saturday’s editions.

In the 4 1/2-by-5-inch photo, Jackson is seen turning his head back over his right shoulder and kissing Escobales, 19, of Allentown, Pa. It was blacked out after Russell Garris, the district’s assistant superintendent who oversees the city’s high schools, told Bolden he was concerned that the photo could upset parents.

The photo was among several that appeared on a special personal tribute page in the yearbook.

Jackson, who paid $150 for the page, noted that the yearbook is filled with pictures of heterosexual couples kissing.

Newark public schools have about 42,000 students, making it the largest district in New Jersey.

___

Newark schools:

www.nps.k12.nj.us

NEW YORK (AP)

A CBS News producer whose skull was fractured while he was vacationing last year sued the network Monday, charging he was discriminated against for being gay and was fired for publicly discussing the attack.

Richard N. Jefferson, 52, claims in papers filed in Manhattan’s state Supreme Court that CBS officials harassed him based upon his sexual orientation, then fired him because he complained about it.

CBS spokeswoman Sandra Genelius issued a statement calling the suit “unequivocally baseless.” Jefferson’s contract was not renewed “due to legitimate issues with his performance that had been previously discussed with him,” she said.

Jefferson, who started as a producer for CBS in January 1989 and worked several jobs until he was fired Nov. 20, 2006, said Monday his problems stemmed from the vicious assault he suffered April 6, 2006, on St. Maarten in the Caribbean.

Jefferson said strangers nearly hit him and a friend with a car as they left a casino. The men in the car then smashed his head with a tire iron and attacked his colleague.

Jefferson said he called CBS and the network sent an air ambulance to lift him and his severely injured friend out of Philipsburg, the island’s largest city, a consideration that he says probably saved his friend’s life.

But back at work, Jefferson said, senior vice president Linda Mason tried to control his public comments about the incident, telling him, “If you get involved in advocacy issues, we might ask you to take a leave of absence.”

“She told me this was a gay rights issue and I said it had nothing to do with gay rights; I was the victim of a crime,” Jefferson said.

Jefferson’s lawsuit names CBS and Mason as defendants, along with CBS News executive producer Patricia Shevlin.

Jefferson claims CBS “improperly pried into his private life, dictated his after hours activities, restricted his First Amendment rights, created false complaints about his performance,” and then “terminated him on the basis of his sexual orientation.”

He is seeking $5 million in compensatory damages and $5 million in punitive damages.

Genelius said in her news release that Jefferson’s lawsuit reveals “a stunningly selective recall of the facts.”

CBS News supported Jefferson’s “right to discuss the attack publicly and to seek justice, which he clearly did,” Genelius said.

Last November, four people were convicted of public violence and causing grievous bodily harm in the attack and sentenced to terms ranging from six months to six years in prison.

 

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Today’s Headlines
Gay Couple Kissing Censored in Yearbook
Religious Groups Take Lead for Gay Pride

NEW YORK (AP)

Religious groups led the city’s gay pride parade on Sunday, lending gravity to an often outrageous event that also featured a jumble of drag queens in feather boas, marching bands, motorcycle-riding lesbians, rugby players and samba dancers.

“We stand for a progressive religious voice,” said Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum of New York City’s Congregation Beth Simchat Torah. “Those who use religion to advocate an anti-gay agenda, I believe, are blaspheming God’s name.”

The annual parade, one of dozens around the world, commemorates the 1969 Stonewall riots in which patrons at a Greenwich Village gay bar fought back against a police raid.

At San Francisco’s festival, the wife of Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards marked the occasion by splitting with her husband over support for legalized gay marriage.

“I don’t know why someone else’s marriage has anything to do with me,” Elizabeth Edwards said at a news conference before the parade. “I’m completely comfortable with gay marriage.”

Kleinbaum, who heads the world’s largest predominantly gay synagogue, and the Rev. Troy Perry, founder of the Metropolitan Community Church, were the New York parade’s grand marshals, waving from hers-and-his convertibles.

The march took place days after the New York State Assembly passed a bill legalizing same-sex marriage, which Gov. Eliot Spitzer supports. Although the bill is unlikely to pass the Republican-controlled state Senate anytime soon, parade-goers said they were cheered by the Assembly’s action.

“This is one very important step toward full equality for all New Yorkers,” Kleinbaum said.

City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, one of the nation’s most prominent openly gay elected officials, said she could not predict when the Senate might approve same-sex marriage.

“All conventional wisdom in New York state on gay marriage is out the window,” she said. “I think we are really doing better than anyone would ever have thought we could be doing on this.”

As in past years, exhibitionists were also on display as the parade inched down Fifth Avenue and into Greenwich Village. Some revelers gyrated in bikini briefs and pranced in spike heels.

But the placement of the Christian, Jewish and Buddhist religious organizations near the head of the march – ahead of AIDS service groups and political advocacy groups – gave them unaccustomed prominence.

A Buddhist group carried signs that said “Construct Dignity in Your Heart” and “Don’t Block Your Buddha.”

“We’re all Buddhas,” said Hortense De Castro, a teacher from Manhattan. “It’s just a matter of letting it come out.”

The gay Catholic group Dignity had a float and a giant rainbow flag. Jeff Stone, secretary of the New York chapter, said he was hopeful the church would someday change its stance opposing homosexuality.

“We see that the opinion of ordinary Catholics is changing,” he said. “Eventually what happens at the grass roots percolates up in the church.”

Mayor Michael Bloomberg marched with Quinn and other elected officials, including Lt. Gov. David Paterson.

Toni Cinanni of Perth, Australia, said she was surprised at the prominence of the church groups.

“I thought the religious groups had hijacked the parade,” she said. “I couldn’t put it together, religion and sexuality.”

New York’s parade featured contingents of gay police officers and firefighters, as well as ethnic gay groups including South Asians, Haitians and American Indians. An Argentinian and Uruguayan group featured an Eva Peron impersonator in a flowing gown.

Tens of thousands of people attended the march. Spectators lining Fifth Avenue included gay people sporting rainbow flags and curious tourists.

Andrew Stanley of Shrewsbury, England, said the march was “very colorful.”

“I’ve never seen one before,” he said, “but I think it’s a good idea.”

—

On the Net: http://www.nycpride.org/