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The study, by the Washington–based Human Rights Campaign, found that 3572 companies, colleges and states and local governments offered or have announced they would offer health insurance covering their employees’ domestic partners.

This was up 25 percent from a year ago, when 2856 large employers extended such benefits.

The findings were included in the group’s annual “State of the Workplace for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered Americans.”

“Domestic partner benefits are increasingly becoming a standard business practice in corporate America,” said Kim I. Mills, education director of the Human Rights Campaign. “Employers have discovered that these benefits help attract and keep the best workers, a critical consideration in the current tight job market.”

Child visitation

PROVIDENCE, R.I.—Another state has clarified the rights of same–sex partners to child visitation after a breakup.

The Rhode Island Supreme Court has ruled that a woman can petition Family Court for the right to visit the son she and her former partner raised together.

The 3–2 decision gives de facto—“in fact”—parents, including gay couples, the same rights to petition for visitation as biological and adoptive parents.

In the case, Concetta DiCenzo, 43, was trying to prevent her former partner, Maureen Rubano, 53, from petitioning Family Court for the right to visit the son DiCenzo gave birth to in 1991 after undergoing artificial insemination. She and Rubano sent out birth announcements identifying them both as the child’s parents, and the last name of Rubano–DiCenzo was listed on the birth certificate.

“The fact that DiCenzo not only gave birth to this child but also nurtured him from infancy does not mean that she can arbitrarily terminate Rubano’s de facto parental relationship with the boy, a relationship that DiCenzo agreed to and fostered for many years,” Justice Robert Flanders wrote in the majority opinion.

Manhattan Scouts

NEW YORK—A school board overseeing 42 Manhattan schools has kicked the Boy Scouts out.

The board of Community School District Two, which passed the resolution, became the first district in the city to enact such a ban.

“It’s an important message to send that discrimination will not be tolerated in our schools,” said board member Brian Ellner, who wrote the resolution.

The ban keeps the schools in the district, primarily elementary and middle schools, from sponsoring troops, which none currently do. The troops may still meet on campus, as can most any independent group.

AIDS prevention

WASHINGTON—A new medical report says more must be done to prevent AIDS infection.

A slowing of the epidemic has led to complacency, says a new report that calls on the government to launch stronger prevention efforts and improve tracking of the virus that causes the disease.

“Improved treatments may have contributed to a false sense of security and a dangerous complacency, but the need for prevention has not diminished one bit,” warned Dr. Harvey Feinberg, provost of Harvard University and co–chairman of the committee that prepared the report.

While the spread of AIDS among gay men has declined over the last 15 years, there has been an increase among women, minorities, and adolescents, according to the report released Wednesday by the Institute of Medicine, an arm of the National Academy of Sciences.

There have also been recent reports of an increase in risky behavior by men who have sex with men.

Lesbian cop

NEW YORK—A federal judge has taken the New York City Police Department to task for the investigation it conducted into complaints by an officer who is a lesbian.

Judge Lewis A. Kaplan said the probe was lax.

He delivered his rebuke of the department as he told a jury hearing the case that the trial would end prematurely because Elizabeth Bryant had reached a settlement with the city.

He said it was “outrageous” if testimony was true that the city did little to investigate Bryant’s claims that officers refused to ride with her and posted pictures around the precinct of a male bodybuilder with her face pasted over his.

Bryant said the harassment began after she revealed she was a lesbian and held a public ceremony with her partner in Central Park in 1997.

The judge voiced concern over the testimony of Sgt. Sandra Williams, a retired investigator with the police department’s Office of Equal Employment Opportunity, who told the jury that little was done during the investigation beyond interviewing Bryant and employees she had accused of harassment.

Gay bar shooting

ROANOKE, Va.—More charges have been filed against a man who walked into a gay bar and opened fire, killing one.

Ronald Edward Gay, 54, who police said opened fire because he was upset that his last name made him the victim of jokes, is accused of killing Danny Lee Overstreet and wounding six other bar patrons.

Gay initially was charged with murder.

The new charges against him include six counts of aggravated malicious wounding, six counts of subsequent use of a firearm, and one count of shooting within an occupied building.

If convicted, Gay could face life in prison on the murder charge and a minimum of 20 years in prison on each count of aggravated malicious wounding.

He remains in jail without bail. One of the shooting victims still is hospitalized in stable condition.

Alabama Episcopals

MOBILE, Ala.—The first Episcopal congregation in the state of Alabama has left the denomination over gay rights.

Members of Christ Church voted overwhelmingly Sunday to affiliate with the Anglican Mission in America, whose bishops are under the authority of archbishops of the Province of Rwanda and the Province of South East Asia.

Gay issues have created a rift between liberal and conservative Episcopalians and in other denominations. Delegates to the Episcopal General Convention in July declared the church should support unmarried couples—homosexual and heterosexual—in monogamous relationships honoring religious values.

A spokeswoman for AMIA, based in Pawleys Island, S.C., said they have 17 congregations in at least 13 states, including six in the South.

VPs on marriage

WASHINGTON—Both parties’ vice presidential candidates have shown some growing recognition of the needs of same–sex couples when it comes to marriage.

Democrat Joseph Lieberman and Republican Dick Cheney both were asked about gay marriage during their debate.

Both said they believed greater recognition was needed for same–sex relationships, including the granting of benefits. But both also stopped well short of endorsing marriage.

“But I must say, I’m thinking about this because I have friends who are in gay and lesbian partnerships who have said to me, ‘Isn’t it unfair that we don’t have similar legal rights to inheritance, to visitation when one of the partners is ill, to health care benefits?’” Lieberman said. “And that’s why I’m thinking about it. And my mind is open to taking some action that will address those elements of unfairness while respecting the traditional religious and civil institution of marriage.”

On the broader question, Cheney said: “People should be able to enter into any kind of relationship they want to enter into. It’s really no one else’s business in terms of trying to regulate or prohibit behavior in that regard.”

When it came to marriage, he said: “That’s a tougher problem. That’s not a slam–dunk. I think the fact of the matter, of course, is that matter is regulated by the states. I think different states are likely to come to different conclusions and that’s appropriate.”

Almost an apology

LOS ANGELES—Dr. Laura says she’s sorry—sort of.

Laura Schlessinger used the Jewish Yom Kippur holiday—the Day of Atonement—to apologize to gays and lesbians for “poorly chosen” words she said have been perceived as hate speech.

“On the Day of Atonement, Jews are commanded to seek forgiveness from people we have hurt,” the radio and TV talk show host, who is Jewish, said in a newspaper ad. “I deeply regret the hurt this situation has caused the gay and lesbian community.”

The ad, in the form of a letter signed by Schlessinger, was included in a special “Gay Hollywood” edition of the trade paper Daily Variety.

Schlessinger has been criticized by gay rights activists for referring to homosexuality as a “biological error” and “deviant.” In March, she said she was sorry her radio comments have hurt people, but retracted that apology three days later.

Gay center

PHILADELPHIA—The University of Pennsylvania is being rewarded for bringing two men together.

The couple, who met 17 years ago at the school, have donated $2 million for a new GLBT student center at the school.

David Goodhand and Vincent Griski said they wanted to help students with a place to meet and get information on things such as career planning and safe sex.

“Kids today come out of school very self–aware and very self–confident, but at the same time, their needs are greater,” Goodhand said. “It’s so much different today. These days kids want to know about nondiscrimination policies and whether a company offers benefits to same–sex partners. We didn’t worry about those kinds of things back then.”

The money donated by Goodhand, 37, and Griski, 36, will be used to renovate a building that will house the university’s 18–year–old Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Center.

The gift represents the largest single gift to a gay and lesbian campus organization, said Katherine Pease, executive director of the Denver–based Gill Foundation, the largest philanthropic foundation in the country for gay issues.

Legislative chaplain

PHOENIX—The Arizona Legislature’s chaplain says he’s gay. Now the Republicans who run the place say he also may be unemployed.

The Rev. Charles Coppinger has served as chaplain to the House since 1996 and the Senate since 1997. He was appointed, and reappointed, by conservative Republicans who have been some of his strongest supporters. Some of that support was based on a shared religious view that homosexuality was contrary to the teachings of the Bible.

Now that he has acknowledged his sexual orientation, it is unclear whether Coppinger will remain chaplain.

“He betrayed all of us who have been past supporters,” Sen. Scott Bundgaard, R–Glendale, said. “Charley has ruined his credibility as a teacher on religious issues and as such I believe he’s no longer qualified to be the chaplain at the Legislature. He should resign.”

Gay custody

LOS ANGELES—A gay couple is struggling to regain custody of a 10–year–old boy they’ve raised since he was an infant.

Paul Washington, Sr., alleges his son, who is the boy’s uncle, and a gay companion abused the child and promoted a gay lifestyle. He has refused to reveal the whereabouts of the grandson, Miguel.

Miguel had been in the custody of Paul Washington, Jr., and his partner, Timothy Forrester, since he was 8 days old.

Miguel’s grandfather picked him up from the couple’s Cathedral City home on Oct. 6 for an overnight fishing trip and never brought him back, the younger Washington said.

Instead, the couple received a letter from a Los Angeles law firm Oct. 7 stating that Miguel had been removed from their home. They were accused of “actively promoting or influencing a gay lifestyle for the minor.”

The letter cited Miguel’s participation in ballet and “gay art class,” instead of baseball, as one reason for the boy’s removal.

A judge has ordered the boy returned to the couple. Washington, Sr. complied on a few days later.

Buchanan ad

ORLANDO, Fla.—Reform Party presidential candidate Patrick Buchanan is borrowing a page from the Take Back Vermont crowd.

After visiting the Vermont farm where the Take Back Vermont movement was born, the conservative politician unveiled television commercials for his campaign.

They declare: “Take Back America.”

“The purpose of this ad is to raise legitimate issues which are great controversies in America today that have been utterly ignored by the other candidates in the other parties—that is the assault on America’s culture,” Buchanan said at a news conference.

The ad opens with a teacher forcing apart the hands of a schoolgirl who is praying at her desk. “They’ve taken God and the Bible out of our schools,” a narrator says.

It cuts to a tablet of the Ten Commandments being torn from the wall and the narrator saying, “They’ve pulled the Ten Commandments off the classroom walls.”

Pictures of Boy Scouts then flash on the screen. “Now they’re after the Boy Scouts, calling them a hate group because they won’t let homosexual men be scout leaders.”

“It’s time to take our country back from those who are tearing it down,” the narrator says. “George W. Bush and Al Gore will do nothing. One candidate isn’t afraid to fight back: Pat Buchanan.”

The ad ends with images of Buchanan and the narrator intoning, “Vote for the third party that puts families first. Vote Buchanan for President.”