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America Online and the Merriam-Webster Inc. Web site removed a thesaurus from the Web temporarily so it could delete 'fruit' and 'faggot' from the synonyms for 'homosexual.'
The thesaurus is being further reworked to remove all synonyms for 'homosexual' and to clarify symbols indicating potentially offensive words.
Deborah Burns, Merriam-Webster's director of marketing, said the company decided to remove all synonyms for 'homosexual' to conform with a 25-year-old policy not to offer entries for racial or ethnic groups.
"Along the way, we should have incorporated sexual groups into that same policy," she said. "But first, we're making an apology about this. We were in error in a couple of ways and we're glad someone has brought it to our attention."
The pope complained that efforts to recognize gay unions in the same way as marriages between men and women contribute to the "widespread deterioration of the natural and religious sense of marriage.''
Although a few small cities and towns in Italy have recently given gay couples benefits such as pensions and public housing, the Vatican frowns on such initiatives.
The pope's long-standing position is that homosexuals should be treated compassionately. But he rules out homosexual sex along with any sex outside marriage.
"It's not possible to ignore the growing phenomenon of simple de facto unions and the insistent opinion campaigns to obtain conjugal dignity for unions even among people from the same sex," John Paul said.
"It is only in the union between two sexually different persons that the perfection of the individual can occur, in a synthesis of unity and of mutual psychic-physical completeness," the pope told officials from the Vatican tribunal that rules on requests for marriage annulments.
Air Force and Army officials say they've had big increases in the number of discharges of gay personnel and the total number for all branches of the armed services was the largest in a decade.
Air Force officials said they believe many of their discharges were young recruits declaring themselves homosexual to secure a quick and penalty-free exit from the service.
The Army said only that most of those being discharged were young recruits or in their first year of service.
More than half the Air Force's 414 discharges were at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas, where recruits do six weeks of basic training. In the vast majority of cases, the person voluntarily stated that he or she was gay, officials said.
"In virtually every self-initiated disclosure, the second statement made is, 'I'd also like to be discharged,'" said David Smith of Air Education and Training Command at Randolph Air Force Base, Texas.
He said this led officials to conclude that a growing number of recruits are using a gay declaration to escape the service.
The Army reported a 50 percent increase in discharges last year to 310; the Navy said its number fell by nearly a quarter to 345; the Marine Corps had a slight drop to 76.
Most were reported as voluntary statements of homosexuality, although only the Air Force expressed a belief they were excuses for getting out.
Holocaust memorial day services at the former Sachsenhausen concentration camp remembered homosexual victims of the Nazis. It was the first official commemoration of the estimated 10,000 gays persecuted during World War II.
"There were different groups of victims, but all were victims and all should be commemorated in the same way. There should be no discrimination between groups of Nazi victims," said Horst Seferens, spokesman for the memorial.
Sachsenhausen had about 1,000 homosexual inmates, more than other concentration camps because of its proximity to Berlin's thriving gay culture, Seferens said.
Identified by pink triangles on their uniforms, gay prisoners were isolated and subjected to particularly hard labor.
Andrew Tobias' appointment is expected to be confirmed at a DNC meeting in March. He replaces Carol Pensky and will serve at least through the 2000 election.
It's not exactly a high-paying job. He'll be paid a dollar.
"I am really gonna hang tough. I am determined to get that dollar,'' Tobias said.
Tobias is known for his witty guide to personal finance and thrift, The Only Investment Guide You'll Ever Need, his work on Worth magazine, and his acclaimed memoir about coming of age as a gay man, The Best Little Boy in the World.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that the number of gay men in San Francisco who reported having unprotected anal sex increased to 39.2 percent in 1997, from 30.4 percent in 1994.
Those who said they had unprotected sex with multiple partners grew to 33 percent in 1997, up from 23.6 percent in 1994, the CDC said. Males 25 and younger accounted for the largest increase in that group.
The agency said there is mounting evidence that young gay and bisexual men are less likely to engage in safe sex than older counterparts.
"The younger group hasn't grown up watching their partners and friends die of this disease," said Dr. Richard Steketee of the CDC's HIV/AIDS prevention branch.
Adults attending those classes are being given lessons on how homosexuals can "change."
"I hope through this lesson that people would see an open door for all sinners and come and have a changed life through Jesus Christ," said Ross McLaren, who worked on the lessons.
McLaren, a biblical studies specialist at Lifeway Christian Resources, the publishing arm of the 15.6-million-member Southern Baptist Convention, said the lessons condemn homosexuality but not homosexuals.
Bill Turner, co-chairman of the Lesbian and Gay Coalition for Justice in Tennessee, said he finds the idea of "hate the sin but love the sinner" patronizing.
"I know plenty of lesbian and gay Christians who are quite convinced that they have a perfectly adequate relationship with God and are still gay," said Turner, adding he is not contesting Southern Baptists' right to teach what they want.
Vernon Berg was an artist and one of the first officers to stand up to the military after he was discharged for being homosexual. He died of complications from AIDS. He was 47.
Berg was given an "other than honorable" discharge from the Navy as an ensign in 1976 after an investigation revealed he was in a gay relationship.
He sued, and the armed forces later adopted a policy of generally granting honorable discharges to homosexuals.
In 1978, a federal appeals court ruled Berg and another officer were unfairly discharged, but didn't reinstate them. Instead, his discharge was upgraded to honorable.
Wyoming is one of nine states without bias crimes laws, and lawmakers have rejected similar measures four times since 1995.
After Shepard's death in October, calls for a bias crimes law increased, and Republican Gov. Jim Geringer supported it for the first time.
Two measures died in the Senate Judiciary Committee. Both would have increased the maximum fine for a felony by up to $5,000 and raised the maximum prison sentence by up to five years if prosecutors could prove the crime was motivated by bias.
School officials fear including homosexuals in the anti-discrimination policy would allow the courts to interpret Roman Catholic doctrine.
The university's Board of Fellows, charged with maintaining the school's Roman Catholic character, said in a statement from London that they did not "believe that the university should leave to civil courts the interpretation and application of Church teaching."
The decision thwarted plans by homosexual students to test the university's discrimination policies in federal court, exactly what the school feared most, said Tim Byrne, a member of the Progressive Student Alliance that has fought for the change.
"In the short run, we'll try to win some smaller battles to attack some other things we're after on a department by department basis," he said. "I guess we retract a little bit and get at the small gains."
The Rev. Jerry Falwell is trying to out the purple, purse-toting character on television's popular Teletubbies children's show. Falwell suggests the character is gay.
A spokesman for Itsy Bitsy Entertainment Co., which licenses the Teletubbies in the United States, said the purse is actually Tinky Winky's magic bag.
"The fact that he carries a magic bag doesn't make him gay," Steve Rice said. "It's a children's show, folks. To think we would be putting sexual innuendo in a children's show is kind of outlandish."
The February edition of Falwell's National Liberty Journal contains an article warning parents that the Teletubby with the triangular antenna may be a gay role model.
To support its claim, the publication says Tinky Winky has a boy's voice but carries a purse. "He is purple -- the gay-pride color; and his antenna is shaped like a triangle -- the gay-pride symbol."
Falwell contends the "subtle depictions" are intentional and issued a statement Tuesday that said, "As a Christian, I feel that role modeling the gay lifestyle is damaging to the moral lives of children."
An appeals court has thrown out a 194-year-old Louisiana law against sodomy, saying that consensual oral and anal sex is protected by the right to privacy in the state constitution.
The court unanimously reversed the 1996 conviction of Mitchell E. Smith. He had been accused of raping a woman but found guilty under the state's "crimes against nature" statute only of having her perform oral sex.
"There can be no doubt that the right of consenting adults to engage in private non-commercial sexual activity, free from governmental interference, is protected by the privacy clause of the Louisiana Constitution," the judges wrote.
The decision reversed Smith's conviction and his sentence of two years probation.
