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In mid-January, the Globe and Mail reported that Ottawa will proceed with amendments treating homosexual couples the same as heterosexuals in matters from pensions to bankruptcy.
Insiders say the legislative changes are being sparked by increasing numbers of lawsuits charging that discriminatory federal laws violate the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
One lawsuit brought against the government by a GLBT rights organization demands changes to 58 statutes.
Michael was sentenced to 80 hours of community service as part of his no-contest plea to lewd conduct in a park restroom.
Municipal Court Judge Charles Rubin warned the singer's attorney during a hearing Monday that Michael is under a court order to stay out of Will Rogers Park for the duration of his probation, about 17 more months.
"Make sure he is reinformed of that," Rubin said after Brad Barnholtz gave the judge proof that Michael completed his community service with a youth leadership program and paid $910 in fines. He also participated in five, one-hour counseling sessions.
Michael, 35, was arrested April 7 by an undercover police officer in a restroom at the park across from the Beverly Hills Hotel. He acknowledged he was gay after the incident.
A judge denied their motions to quash charges against them that they engaged in sodomy. That sends their case to a state appeals court, where they hope to overturn the state's 119-year-old law making gay sex a crime.
John Geddes Lawrence, 55, and Tyrone Garner, 31, were arrested Sept. 17 in Lawrence's apartment and charged with engaging in homosexual conduct, a misdemeanor.
Both pleaded no contest last month, but appealed to the next court with a motion to quash the charges.
Under an agreement reached with prosecutors, Lawrence and Garner again pleaded no contest. The judge fined them $200 each and allowed the immediate filing of their new appeals.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the survey underscores the need to continue government funding for anonymous HIV testing, even as the agency asks states to start keeping names of people who get treated for the virus that causes AIDS.
Last month, the CDC published new recommendations in which it asked all states to begin reporting HIV cases either with the person's name or an identifying code.
The CDC says the information will help health officials track HIV cases before they become full-blown AIDS. But some AIDS activists believe privacy concerns will steer some people away from being tested at all.
Despite the controversy over reporting of names, the CDC's survey found the most common reason for not getting tested was that people were afraid of learning they were HIV-positive.
The 21-year-old University of Wyoming student has become a symbol of the demand for national hate crimes legislation because of the savage way he was killed, in large part because he was gay.
Prosecutors have notified lawyers for Aaron James McKinney and Russell Arthur Henderson, both 21, that they intend to seek the death penalty if the men are convicted.
They're accused of luring Shepard out of a bar. Police say the two robbed and pistol-whipped the 105-pound freshman, tied him to a log fence and beat him into unconsciousness. Shepard died five days later, on Oct. 12, 1998.
Wyoming, whose motto is the Equality State, is one of nine states with no hate-crime law.
Less than a week before the prosecutors' announcement, Henderson's girlfriend, Chasity Vera Pasley, 20, pleaded guilty to being an accessory after the fact to first-degree murder.
Attorneys said Pasley did not plead guilty as part of a plea bargain, and she will be called as a witness if the case against the other defendants goes to trial.
Pasley and Kristen LeAnn Price, 19 are accused of helping McKinney and Henderson dispose of bloody clothing Henderson wore during the attack.
Price, McKinney's girlfriend, also was charged with being an accessory after the fact to first-degree murder. No date was set for her trial.
The US Court of Appeals found that Dr. Randon Bragdon of Bangor, Maine, violated the Americans With Disabilities Act by refusing to treat Sidney Abbott in his office in 1994 for fear of contracting the virus that causes AIDS.
The case has had a long history, including one appearance before the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled that the disabilities act protects people with HIV unless they pose "a direct threat" to the health and safety of others.
Abbott was referred to Bragdon's office by the Eastern Maine AIDS Network after Bragdon allegedly told another patent that he would not treat patients with infectious diseases. Bragdon's lawyer said the group targeted his client because they wanted to use the incident as a test case.
Bragdon had offered to fill the woman's cavity in a hospital, which he argued would allow him to take additional precautions against being infected.
Abbott refused the offer, which would have required her to pay $185 for a procedure that would cost only $35 at the office. She eventually had the cavity filled by another dentist.
Bragdon has long argued that performing an invasive procedure on Abbott without special precautions would put him at risk for infection.
Another appeal to the Supreme Court is considered likely.
The Boy Scouts of America want the high court to overturn a 1998 appeals court decision saying dismissal of assistant scoutmaster James Dale violated state anti-discrimination law.
Dale's attorneys told the court the Boy Scouts are not protected by First Amendment rights of expression because discriminating against gays is not the specific purpose for which the group was formed, citing such protected groups as the Ku Klux Klan.
George Davidson, an attorney for the Boy Scouts, said the group has a right to pick its own leaders without interference from "an all powerful state."
"An essential part of the Boy Scout message is to be morally straight," Davidson said. "The view that homosexual conduct is an acceptable way of conducting oneself is not morally straight."
Evan Wolfson, representing Dale for the Lambda Legal Defense & Education Fund, said the state's laws against discrimination "are simply too compelling" to overturn the appeals court ruling.
"The Boy Scouts' hierarchy has a policy of discrimination, but it is not a specific purpose of the organization, the reason that brought members together," said Wolfson. She said there is no mention of a policy excluding homosexuals in thousands of pages of Boy Scout literature.
Thomas Kalt Jr., 26, shot himself with his service revolver just a month after reaching his goal of joining the force. He reportedly was distraught after breaking up with his boyfriend.
Some in the gay community fear the suicide could brand homosexual officers as unstable.
"This is not about the ability of gay officers to serve, it is about the personal tragedy of one man," Andrew S. Park, executive director of the Center for Lesbian and Gay Civil Rights, said Thursday. "Many lesbians and gay men are serving with distinction in the police force in Philadelphia and across the country."
Two paragraphs describing the Nazis' persecution of homosexuals, were deleted from the 92-page guide on advice of the Georgia Commission on the Holocaust.
The deletion angered gay leaders, who urged the commission to reconsider.
Though the state agency did change its decision, it was too late to reprint the 6,000 guides. Instead, it agreed to send the excised words in a separate letter to all teachers who ordered the guide.
The Holocaust commission initially recommended the language for deletion out of concern it was too sexually graphic for young students.
Providing the missing paragraphs separately will allow teachers to present the material "in an age-appropriate manner," said Harry Knox, director of the Georgia Equality Project, a gay advocacy group.
Here's what the paragraphs that offended say:
"German male homosexuals were targeted and arrested because they would not breed the master race: they were an affront to the Nazi macho image."
"The doors of the third (cattle) car open and the homosexuals spill forth, males only, because as Himmler concluded, 'lesbians can give birth.' The taunting jeers, and blows of the guards stun the men. They will stay a night and then be rerouted to Sachsenhausen and Buchenwald to be with their kind. The pink triangle they will soon wear is a result of a judgment that they have broken Article 175A, by sexual act, by kissing, by embracing, by fantasy and thought. Some will be given an opportunity to recant by successfully completing sexual activity with a woman in the camp brothel. Most others will find themselves tormented from all sides as they struggle to avoid being assaulted, raped, worked and beaten to death."
The court again has refused to consider a case appealing the policy governing gays and lesbians in the military.
The court, without comment, turned away arguments by two servicemen that the policy is based on prejudice against homosexuals and violates their free-speech rights.
The action was not a definitive ruling, but it marked the fifth time in recent years that the highest court has rejected efforts to invalidate the policy.
It prohibits inquiries into a service member's sexual orientation but allows discharge for homosexual conduct or for a "propensity" to engage in homosexual conduct. A service member's statement that he or she is gay is considered evidence of a propensity to engage in such acts.
Every federal appeals court that has considered the issue has upheld the policy.
The president has sent the nomination of James Hormel to the Senate for confirmation as ambassador to Luxembourg. The White House said it hopes "fairness will prevail" in the new Congress so he can be approved for the job.
The Senate last year refused to vote on the nomination of Hormel after several conservative Republicans accused him of promoting homosexual views.
The White House accused lawmakers of prejudice.
Hormel, who is gay, was approved by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, but Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., didn't allow his nomination to come to the floor in the face of scattered GOP objections.
Barry Toiv, a White House spokesman, expressed confidence Hormel would be approved by the full Senate this year because a majority back the 66-year-old San Francisco philanthropist and heir to the Hormel Meat Co.
The "holy union" ceremony between Ellie Charlton, 63, and Jeanne Barnett, 68, was blessed by more than 90 United Methodist ministers in a dramatic mass defiance of a church law against same-sex marriages.
"I promise to love you the rest of my life," a tearful Charlton told Barnett.
Behind them on the stage, the ministers lined up on risers and chanted a blessing that could cost them their jobs:
"O God, our maker, we gladly proclaim to the world that Jeanne and Ellie are loving partners together for life."
"If anyone wants to file charges against us, this is what the charges are for, praying this prayer," said the Rev. Donald Fado, pastor of St. Mark's United Methodist Church in suburban Sacramento, the organizer of the ceremony that was part church service and part civil rights demonstration.
The unprecedented service dramatizes the conflict that has been simmering for years within the United Methodist Church, with 8.5 million members America's second biggest Protestant body after the Southern Baptist Convention.
In 1996, the church's legislature, the General Conference, took a stand against clergy around the country who had been quietly performing same-sex couple blessings. It added these words to the Methodists' Book of Discipline: "Ceremonies that celebrate homosexual unions shall not be conducted by our ministers and shall not be conducted in our churches."
