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GREENFIELD, Mass. — Two prep school students are accused of carving an anti-gay slur in the back of a third student after a dispute over musical tastes.
Jonathan Shapiro, 18 of Keene, N.H., and Matthew Rogers, 20, of Franklin, Tenn., are accused of using a pocket knife to cut the word "HOMO" into the back of a 17-year-old junior at Northfield Mount Hermon School.
Police said the victim was attacked because he liked the British rock band Queen, whose lead singer, Freddie Mercury, died of AIDS complications in 1991.
"Rogers called it a gay band," said Gill Police Chief David Hastings.
Both students pleaded innocent to charges of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, assault with intent to maim, and assault with intent to intimidate, resulting in bodily harm.
Hastings described the wounds as "deep enough to draw blood."
"When I saw them they were three days old and they were still very visible," he said. "The letters were 4 to 5 inches high and ran all the way across his back."
ROCKFORD, Ala. — Two men have pleaded innocent in the recent killing of a gay man.
Charles Monroe Butler Jr., 21, and Steven Eric Mullins, 25, could receive the death penalty if convicted on the capital murder charges in the death of 39-year-old Billy Jack Gaither.
The two are accused of beating Gaither to death with an ax handle Feb. 19 and burning his body atop a pile of kerosene-soaked tires after luring him from his home with a phone call.
Authorities have said Mullins and Butler confessed to killing Gaither because he made a pass at one of them. All three men lived in or near Sylacauga, a town of about 12,500 people about 45 miles southeast of Birmingham.
LARAMIE, Wyo. — A woman who pleaded guilty to helping dispose of her boyfriend's bloody clothes after he beat gay college student Matthew Shepard is going to jail for as much as two years.
Chasity Vera Pasley, 20, cried repeatedly as she was sentenced to 15 months to two years in prison for being an accessory after the fact to first-degree murder.
Pasley said she was sorry for helping to dispose of bloody clothing her boyfriend, Russell Henderson, wore during the Oct. 7 attack on Shepard, 21.
Authorities said Henderson and Aaron McKinney, both 21, posed as homosexuals and lured Shepard out of a bar before taking him to a remote area, pistol-whipping him and leaving him tied to a fence in the cold. He died five days later.
Henderson is serving consecutive life terms after pleading guilty. McKinney is due to stand trial in August.
WASHINGTON — A Maine dentist who refused to treat a woman in his office because she was HIV-positive has lost again before the U.S. Supreme Court.
The court turned away without comment Randon Bragdon's contention that filling a cavity in Sidney Abbott's tooth at his office would have posed a "direct threat" to his health and safety.
Lower courts rejected the claim and ruled for Abbott without even holding trials on her claims of discrimination.
Although the court's action was not a ruling and set no national precedent, it was praised by gay-rights advocates.
"This is the final chapter in a long history of this case, which established that health-care providers cannot refuse critical services to patients with HIV based upon unscientific beliefs about HIV transmission," said Bennett Klein of the Boston-based Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders.
MIAMI — The ACLU is trying to make the state of Florida overturn its ban on adoptions by gays.
"They trust gays and lesbians to be foster care parents but not adoptive parents," said Howard Simon, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union in Florida.
"What we want is to remove that blanket prohibition ... so that they would be evaluated as to their fitness and suitability to be adoptive parents just like everybody else," Simon said.
Florida is the only state with a law that bans gays and lesbians from adopting children now that New Hampshire has repealed its ban on gay adoptions. At least two states - Arkansas and Utah - have state agency rules preventing adoption by gays.
11 down, 39 to go
CARSON CITY, Nev. — Nevada has become the 11th state in the union to adopt a law banning job discrimination against gays and lesbians.
"The governor feels that discrimination in the workplace, whether in the private or the public sector, is simply wrong and this bill is the right thing to do," said Jack Finn, the governor's press secretary.
The bill calls for sexual orientation to be added to race, color, sex, religion and disabilities as things banned from discrimination in hiring, promotion and firing.
Tax-exempt organizations, such as the Boy Scouts, are excluded from the law, which is to take effect Oct. 1.
WASHINGTON — President Clinton has outsmarted the homophobes in the U.S. Senate.
Clinton used a "recess appointment" while the Senate was on vacation to install businessman and lawyer James Hormel, who happens to be gay, as ambassador to Luxembourg.
The appointment angered Catholics and religious conservatives because it bypasses senators who had held up Hormel's nomination since October 1997.
They fear that Hormel, who used part of his family's Hormel food fortune to help create the Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest gay and lesbian political group, will promote a radical agenda.
"I think that by forcing Americans to be represented by a radical homosexual activist like Hormel, Clinton is showing his contempt for traditional morality, marriage, sexual fidelity and any concept of honor," said Robert Knight with the Washington, D.C.-based Family Research Council, a religious lobby. "Who's he going to appoint next? Larry Flynt as ambassador to the Vatican?"
Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, who has compared homosexuality to vices such as kleptomania and sex addiction, refused to schedule a floor vote.
"On one hand, you have these anti-gay senators saying we don't need legislation to protect gays and lesbians but you have the United States Senate discriminating against someone because he's gay," says David Smith of the Human Rights Campaign. "It was very un-American and unfair."
EDINBURGH, Scotland — Pat Robertson is causing controversy over his homophobia and this time he has insulted all of Scotland in doing it.
The Bank of Scotland is being pressured to break off a proposed business link with Robertson.
Some lawmakers told The Scotsman newspaper that they would call for the government to pull its accounts if the Bank of Scotland does not end the affiliation.
The bank acknowledged that as many as 500 accounts had been closed by customers since March, apparently because of the publicity over its dealings with Robertson.
The bank has been working with Robertson on a deal, reportedly worth $48 million, to launch a telephone and Internet banking arm in the United States.
On his "700 Club" television show May 18, Robertson criticized Scotland for its tolerance of homosexuals, calling it a "a rather dark land."
"In Europe, the big word is tolerance," Robertson said. "Homosexuals are riding high in the media. ... And in Scotland, you can't believe how strong the homosexuals are. It's just unbelievable."
TORONTO, ONTARIO — A majority of Canadians are prepared to accept gay marriages - more prepared than their government representatives.
According to the Globe and Mail, a survey conducted by the Angus Reid Group found that 53 percent of Canadians think gay couples should be allowed to marry.
The paper reported that support for the idea was highest in Quebec, with 61 percent of respondents favouring gay marriage. It was lowest in the Western prairie provinces, with 42-43 percent of respondents supporting the notion.
The survey's results came one day after the House of Commons overwhelmingly supported a motion defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman.
Both the poll and the Parliamentary vote follow last month's Supreme Court of Canada's decision that an Ontario law is unconstitutional because it says the term spouse only applies to heterosexual couples.
Although the court did not call for gay marriages or equal status in common-law relationships, its ruling may mean rewriting of laws across the country to prevent discrimination against gay couples.
