In Colorado, Gov. Bill Owens vetoed a bill that would have banned workplace discrimination against gays and lesbians, but he allowed another measure to become law by adding those individuals and the disabled to the list of people protected under the state's existing hate-crimes statutes. The Associated Press reported that Owens said he vetoed the workplace discrimination bill because he considered it unnecessary and said it could force employers to spend large sums defending lawsuits.
Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders lauded the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court's dismissal of C. Joseph Doyle v. Hillary Goodridge et al, the last legal hurdle to same-sex couples marrying in the state. The Doyle case was one of numerous attempts to block the May 17, 2004 implementation of the Goodridge decision and the issuance of marriage licenses to gays.
In New York, the village mayor who challenged state law by attempting to marry gay couples last year will face trial, the state's highest court ruled. The Associated Press reported that New Paltz mayor Jason West faces 24 misdemeanor counts of violating the state's domestic relations law by marrying couples without licenses in late February 2004. He faces fines and up to a year in jail if convicted.
For the first time, a majority of Americans say they are likely to vote for Hillary Rodham Clinton if she runs for president in 2008, according to a USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll. USA Today noted that, according to the poll, 29 percent were 'very likely' to vote for Clinton for president if she runs in 2008, 24 percent were 'somewhat likely,' 7 percent were 'not very likely' and 39 percent were 'not at all likely' to vote for her.
According to another poll coordinated by USA Today and Gallup, more adults believe wedlock for gay and lesbian partners should be acknowledged as legitimate. Thirty-nine percent of respondents in the May survey believe same-sex marriage should be recognized as valid, an 11 percent increase since March.
President George W. Bush's overall job approval rating has hovered just below 50 percent since the beginning of the year, and now most Americans think he is out of touch with their priorities, according to CBS News. The public continues to have doubts about Bush's key foreign and domestic initiatives, in particular Social Security and the Iraq war.
Just months after launching a national campaign against the company, Lambda Legal has issued a release announcing a settlement agreement with auto glass-repair company Nodak Enterprises. ( Lambda Legal filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of Joey Saavedra, who claimed he was fired because he has HIV. ) In the settlement, Nodak has agreed to adopt a non-discrimination policy, to conduct extensive training on HIV issues for its employees, and pay an undisclosed amount of money to Saavedra.
In more Lambda-related news, the organization, arguing that Ohio's new marriage amendment is limited to barring same-sex couples from marriage, planned to seek leave to file friend-of-the-court papers in two domestic violence cases currently on appeal in state court. The cases are on appeal after lower court judges found that the amendment invalidated domestic violence statutes as they relate to unmarried couples. In effect, Lambda Legal claimed that these rulings reduced what would have been felony domestic violence charges to misdemeanors.
Calling issues of sexual orientation outside the boundaries of city business, the Los Altos City Council denied a request from the Los Altos High School Gay-Straight Alliance to proclaim the city's second Gay Pride Day, the Mercury News reported. Councilman King Lear, who helped put the item on the agenda and wrote a memo of support, was on vacation.
The Wisconsin legislature has hired a law firm associated with Focus on the Family to fight a lawsuit by six lesbian state workers seeking family benefits for their partners, according to 365Gay.com . The Republican-controlled Joint Committee on Legislative Organization voted 6-3 along party lines to authorize the Alliance Defense Fund to represent the legislature.
In more Wisconsin-related news, the state legislature's budget committee has voted against providing domestic-partner benefits to University of Wisconsin System employees, rejecting arguments from school officials that they are a needed recruitment and retention tool.
The American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey announced it obtained a court order granting a lesbian couple the right to have both of their names listed on their child's birth certificate, pursuant to New Jersey's artificial insemination statute. The law protects a child's relationship to a non-biological parent who consents to his spouse's artificial insemination.
In Kentucky, the mother of a Louisville teenager murdered in the city's west end believes that he was killed because he was gay, WAVE3.com reported. It has been three days since a Louisville teenager was murdered in the city's west end. Rosalynd Blair, mother of 19-year-old Tim, said that his slaying was a hate crime. Police are unsure if Tim's sexual orientation was a factor in his death.
Spokane, Wash., mayor Jim West apologized for using 'poor judgment' when he responded to claims by The Spokesman-Review that he had offered city jobs to young men he chatted with in gay chat rooms, Edge Boston reported. However, West rejected a demand by local business leaders to resign his post. West took a brief leave of absence earlier last month to fight these accusations and others that he sexually abused two boys in the 1970s.
In California, a Kern County judge declined to immediately overrule a high school principal's decision to censor student newspaper articles on homosexuality, saying the issue deserved a full review, the Mercury News reported. High school journalists sued the Kern High School District on May 19 after principal John Gibson decided they could not run a series of five articles discussing subjects such as a gay student's relationship with his parents, whether homosexuality is biologically determined, and how it felt to come out.
A week after he vetoed legislation that would create a limited domestic partner registry for Maryland same-sex couples, Gov. Robert Ehrlich has signed into law a measure that adds sexual orientation and gender identity to existing hate-crimes law, 365Gay.com reported.
U.S. House Republicans retreated from a measure that would have restricted women's roles in the military in an effort to keep them out of combat, according to the Washington Post. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Army leaders and lawmakers from both parties opposed the change.
The Board of Immigration Appeals has approved a visa petition filed by a transgendered woman on behalf of her male spouse from El Salvador, overturning a denial by the Department of Homeland Security's Nebraska service center director, Gay City News reported. The ruling, described by the board as an 'interim decision,' was based on its conclusion that the marriage between the two is valid under the law in North Carolina, where their ceremony took place.
ExxonMobil shareholders voted with record support for a shareholder resolution to amend the company's written equal employment opportunity policy to include the category of sexual orientation, according to a press release from the Human Rights Campaign. A total of 414 companies in the Fortune 500—or 83 percent—include sexual orientation in their non-discrimination policies and 54 include gender identity.
Famed LGBT activist Urvashi Vaid is taking her talents to the Michigan-based Arcus Foundation, Bay Windows reported. Vaid, currently with the Ford Foundation's Governance and Civil Society Unit, will assume the post of Arcus' executive director in September.
The American Family Association ended its boycott of Disney after nine years and without achieving any of its objectives, ChristianityToday.com reported. The AFA had wanted Disney to ban 'Gay Days' from its theme parks and set up an advisory panel of evangelical Christians, according to Reuters.
