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SYLACAUGA, AL — There's been another horrific gay murder.
Billy Jack Gaither, 39, was found beaten to death with an ax handle. His body then was burned on a pyre of old tires.
Steven Mullins, 25, and Charles Butler, Jr., 21, were arrested and charged with murder. They were each held on $500,000 bail.
Deputy Al Bradley said Mullins and Butler apparently knew Gaither from going to the same bars. He said the two claimed the textile mill worker made a pass at them in early February, after which they plotted his murder.
Mullins telephoned Gaither and the two picked up Butler at a nightclub where he was participating in a pool tournament, authorities said.
The men went to a secluded boat ramp, where Gaither was beaten and thrown into the trunk of his own car. He was then taken to the banks of Peckerwood Creek, where many area churches used to hold baptisms.
Bradley said two tires were set on fire with kerosene atop a concrete platform overlooking the slow-moving water.
LOS ANGELES, CA — A California man has pleaded guilty to murdering five gay men because he thought it would stop the spread of AIDS.
Juan Chavez, 34, avoided a possible death sentence in the capital case by unexpectedly changing his plea about 1 1/2 weeks into the trial, said prosecutor Mike Duarte.
He is scheduled to be sentenced June 21. During the trial, Duarte told jurors that Chavez lured the men to their homes, supposedly for sex, then robbed and strangled them.
He was also accused of taking the victims' cars after killing them.
Chavez confessed to the murders while serving a prison sentence for an unrelated 1996 kidnapping, according to a probation department report. In September of that year, he was charged with strangling the five men in 1986 and 1989.
SYDNEY, Australia — The latest drag craze involves President Clinton's former paramour.
Monica Lewinsky lookalikes dominated Australia's Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras parade this year.
Dozens of Monicas — men dressed in blue evening dresses and black wigs — were greeted with cheers and applause as they danced to blaring disco music behind a float bearing a large painting of the White House.
Each year the parade — which is one of the world's largest gay pride rallies — features characters that have struck a chord with gay society, such as TV character Xena: Warrior Princess.
Organizers said between 750,000 and one million people lined the parade route.
SAN FRANCISCO, CA — A school district has been told its students can't be reassigned to another class just because a teacher is presumed to be gay.
The Rio Bravo-Greeley Union School District wrongfully fostered different treatment toward an eighth-grade science teacher based on his perceived sexual orientation, Chief Deputy Labor Commissioner Jose Millan wrote.
The decision prohibits the district from discriminating against James D. Merrick — a former teacher of the year award winner — in any aspect of employment.
However, while it also prohibits removal of any more students, the ruling does not expressly require the return of any students to Merrick's class.
Fifteen students had been transferred from his class before the ruling.
A teacher for 40 years, Merrick was hired by the district in 1994. He has neither said he is gay nor denied it.
WASHINGTON, DC — A number of congressmen are trying to win approval for a federal hate crimes statute.
"No one says hate crimes are overblown now, not after this year of savage crimes," said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-NY, a co-sponsor of the Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 1999, a replica of last year's bill.
Last month, white supremacist John William King was sentenced to death in Texas for chaining James Byrd, Jr., a black man, behind a pickup truck and dragging him to his death.
In Wyoming, two men have been charged in the October slaying of gay college student Matthew Shepard, who was pistol-whipped and lashed to a fence. In Alabama, another two men have been charged with last month's beating death and burning of Billy Jack Gaither, a gay textile worker.
"We owe it to the families of Byrd and Shepard and Gaither and perhaps others we don't know," said Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., who is sponsoring the bill in the House with Reps. Connie Morella, R-Md., Michael Forbes, R-N.Y., and Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., the first openly gay woman elected to Congress.
WASHINGTON, DC — If this is what it produces, "don't ask, don't tell'' doesn't seem to be working.
Harassment of homosexuals in the military more than doubled last year, according to the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network.
The group counted 400 cases of anti-gay harassment — including death threats — in the military last year, compared with 182 violations in 1997, a 120 percent increase.
The network found 511 incidents — many overlapping with the 400 harassments — in which service members said they were asked about their sexual orientation and their cases were pursued by military investigators or commanders until they quit or were dismissed. In 1997, the legal defense network counted 359 such instances.
The Pentagon declined immediate comment on the report.
There were 1,145 gay discharges from all service branches last year, the Pentagon reported in January. In 1997, the total was 997, the highest number since 1987. The number hit a low of 617 in 1994, the year the "don't ask, don't tell" policy took effect.
NEW ORLEANS, LA — It's safe to have sex in Louisiana now.
A state judge has thrown out the state's sodomy law, saying the statute unconstitutionally criminalized private sexual behavior by adults.
"The state has presented no evidence, much less the required compelling state interest, to justify its intrusion on plaintiffs' constitutionally protected right of privacy," Judge Carolyn Gill-Jefferson wrote.
The law made consensual oral and anal sex a felony punishable by five years in prison.
The ruling was the second victory for opponents of the sodomy law. In February, the state's 4th Circuit Court of Appeal reversed the conviction of a man found guilty of having oral sex with a woman. The appeal court said the law violated privacy rights.
John Rawls, attorney for the gay men and women who challenged the law, predicted the decision will be appealed and upheld by the state Supreme Court.
SAN FRANCISCO, CA — The sisters are causing a stir in San Francisco.
Catholic leaders are upset that the city granted a permit for an Easter Sunday street party thrown by the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, a theater troupe of habit-wearing drag queens.
The Sisters have a permit to close a section of a road in the largely gay Castro District to celebrate their 20th anniversary.
Allowing a group that "mocks the Catholic Church" to close a public street on Easter is comparable to "allowing a group of neo-Nazis to close a city street for a celebration on the Jewish feast of Passover," said Maurice Healy, a spokesman for San Francisco's Roman Catholic Archdiocese.
PIERSON, FL — Charles Rice wore a floor-length red evening gown, red satin shoes, gloves and matching rhinestone jewelry to his high school prom.
But school officials weren't too keen on the 18-year-old's plan to dress in drag. They initially said Rice would be refused entrance to the prom if he showed up in drag.
Principal Peter Oatman backed down after conferring with Superintendent Bill Hall and school district attorneys, as well as reviewing news accounts of his initial decision.
Hall said Rice gets to don his gown for the prom only because the principal let him wear skirts and dresses to special events in the past. Because of these prior episodes, the school system would have had a weak case if the matter had gone to court, Hall said.
