A Boston municipal court judge has banned a homophobe from the city's gay South End neighborhood. Fabio Brandao, accused of gay bashing four people in South End, has been barred from the neighborhood and given a 10 p.m. curfew until his Oct. 10 pretrial conference. Police said Brandao, 28, attacked three men and one woman in the heart of Boston's gay neighborhood last month. Other men allegedly participated in the beating alongside Brandao while using homophobic slurs.
A homeless man recently killed a 19-year-old gay student in New York City. According to police, Jeromie Cancel, 22, used a pillowcase to suffocate out college student Kevin Pravia, who he had just met. Police say the man admitted to killing Pravia and stealing some electronics. He also told police he hung around Pravia's Manhattan apartment to watch the horror movie Saw after he killed him.
The approval ratings for Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, long rumored to be gay, have increased on the heels of news that he is engaged to a woman and that he's behind a state ban on same-sex marriage, Advocate.com reported. A new Quinnipiac Univeristy poll has shown that Crist now has a 61 percent approval rate.
In Iowa, a gay man named Daniel Carver, 46, said that he was fired from a McDonald's restaurant after it was discovered that he is HIV-positive, 365Gay.com reported. Carver, 46, has filed a complaint with the state's civil-rights commission.
A New York Supreme Court judge upheld Gov. David Paterson's order that all state agencies must recognize same-sex marriage performed elsewhere ( such as Canada and California ) , even though gay marriage is illegal in New York. The judge dismissed a lawsuit, brought by the anti-gay and conservative Alliance Defense Fund, that Paterson violated the state constitution's separation of powers.
The gay-rights organization Equality Forum recently reported that over 94 percent of the 2008 Fortune 500 companies voluntarily provide sexual orientation nondiscrimination employment policies.