Constance McMillen

A school district in Mississippi has agreed to pay a recent high school graduate $35,000 in damages and adopt a policy prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation, according to a statement released Tuesday by the American Civil Liberties Union.
The settlement comes after the ACLU sued the school district in Fulton, Mississippi, on behalf of Constance McMillen, a lesbian teen who was told by Itawamba Agricultural High School officials she and her girlfriend would be ejected if they attended the school-sponsored prom.
The agreement, which was filed Tuesday, ends the lawsuit.
“I’m so glad this is all over. I won’t ever get my prom back, but it’s worth it if it changes things at my school,” McMillen said in a statement released Tuesday.
McMillen, who according to the ACLU statement, “suffered humiliation and harassment after parents, students and school officials executed a cruel plan to put on a decoy prom for her while the rest of her classmates were at a private prom 30 miles away.”
“We hope this judgment sends a message to schools that they cannot get away with discriminating against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students,” said Bear Atwood, interim legal director at the ACLU of Mississippi.
Officials at McMillen’s former high school are not commenting at this time and a call to the north Mississippi school district seeking comment wasn’t immediately returned.
from CNN
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San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders, his daughter Lisa and her wife Meaghan Yaple / AP photo

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA – After days of anti-Proposition 8 witnesses being described as liberal and activist, challengers of California’s gay marriage ban elicited testimony Tuesday from San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders, a Republican and the city’s former police chief, who said his previous opposition to same-sex marriage stemmed from prejudice.
At the federal trial over Proposition 8, Sanders told the court that when his elder daughter, Lisa, now 26, was in college, she told him she was a lesbian. He said he expressed his “overwhelming love” for her but also had concerns she would face discrimination.
When he ran for mayor in 2005, Sanders said, he opposed same-sex marriage in favor of civil unions. Lisa worked in his campaign, wanted him to win and did not try to talk him out of his position, he said.
In 2007, the San Diego City Council passed a resolution calling on San Diego to file a friend-of-the-court brief in favor of San Francisco’s effort to overturn a ban on same-sex marriage. Sanders said he intended to veto the measure and called together gay friends and neighbors to explain why.
“I was absolutely shocked at the depth of the hurt, the depth of the feeling,” he testified.
Lawyers for the challengers of Proposition 8 played a video of Sanders crying as he told a news conference the next day that he had changed his mind about marriage for gays.
Sanders testified that he was emotional because he had come so close to sending a message that gay relationships were inferior to those between heterosexuals. “What hit me was that I had been prejudiced,” he said.
During cross-examination, an attorney defending Proposition 8 asked whether Sanders’ previous opposition to same-sex marriage stemmed from an animus against or moral disapproval of gays. Sanders said it had not, but “it doesn’t mean that I don’t believe it was grounded in prejudice.”
from The Los Angeles Times
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Casey Johnson & Tila Tequila

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – Tila Tequila says she is struggling to cope with the sudden death of her purported fiance, Casey Johnson, the heiress to the Johnson & Johnson fortune.
“I can’t stop these haunting visions of her and I,” she wrote on her Twitter early Tuesday morning. “We made such a lovely couple, only beginning to spend the rest of our lives together…”
Johnson’s childhood pals, Paris and Nicky Hilton, also are struggling. (Paris originally asked Johnson to costar with her on the Fox reality show, The Simple Life, but Johnson turned the offer down; Nicky also is godmother to Casey’s adopted daughter, Ava, 3.)
“In bed crying, looking at baby pictures of Casey, Nicky and I,” Paris Twittered. “I feel so upset. I feel like I’ve lost a sister. My heart is broken. Miss her.”
A short time later, Paris added, “God has another Angel by his side. Casey, we all Love and Miss you and know that you are in a better place. R.I.P”
The 30-year-old Johnson — known for her wild partying ways that included drugs and alcohol — was found dead around 11:51 a.m. Monday in her Los Angeles home.
Her death may have been from natural causes since a preliminary investigation turned up no signs of foul play. A final cause of death will be determined by coroner’s officials, who will seek toxicology tests. Results of those tests could take six weeks to obtain.
In a statement to UsMagazine.com, her family says it “is mourning its tragic loss, and asks for privacy during this very difficult time.”
from US Magazine

MONTPELIER, VERMONT – A Vermont woman locked in a child custody battle with a former partner who has since renounced homosexuality asked a judge Monday to hold her ex in contempt and help find her and their 7-year-old daughter.
A lawyer for Janet Jenkins filed an emergency motion for contempt for not surrendering the couple’s daughter, Isabella Miller-Jenkins, on Friday.
The motion seeks court sanctions and the assistance of law enforcement in locating Lisa Miller, whose last known address was Forest, Va., but whose whereabouts are now unknown.
“I am so worried about Isabella,” Jenkins said in a written statement issued by her lawyer, Sarah Star. “I do not know where she is or whether she is okay.”
Miller’s lawyer, Mathew Staver, didn’t immediately return a call seeking comment.
Miller and Jenkins got a civil union in 2000, and the girl was born to Miller after a pregnancy that began with artificial insemination.
They broke up a year later, and Miller moved to Virginia, setting the stage for a custody fight that has been closely watched by gay rights advocates, as well as conservative religious groups.
Courts in Virginia and Vermont have ruled in favor of Jenkins, even though she is not the biological mother. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear arguments on it.
The court filings Monday were made in family court in Rutland, Vt.
Judge William Cohen, who granted the couple’s civil union dissolution and has presided over the custody battle since, didn’t immediately rule on the contempt citation request or set a hearing date, court officials said.
A year ago, in ruling against Miller’s bid to deny visitation by Jenkins, he warned Miller she risked losing custody of the girl if she continued to violate orders. On Nov. 20, he made good on the warning, ordering the custody change.
Jenkins’ lawyers say their concern is the girl’s safety.
“My goal has never been to separate Isabella from Lisa,” Jenkins said in her statement. “I just want Isabella to know and love both of her parents. I just want to be with her, like any parent.”
from The Associated Press

UNITED KINGDOM – Stewart, 37, allegedly put slug pellets into a curry he had offered Marie Walton and Beverley Sales as a peace offering, after the trio had argued for months.
When the women started to eat however, they noticed the pellets and called the police, and Stewart was arrested. He appeared before Manchester magistrates where he admitted attempting to poison the two women last month, but denied a further charge of making threats to kill.
Stewart, from Denton, Manchester, is alleged to have kidnapped the couple’s three-legged cat, Amber, leaving her in a village miles away. The cat was eventually found three miles away being cared for by a woman who had taken her in.
Neighbours of the Miss Walton, a full-time mother, and Miss Sales, a goods vehicle driver, said “what those two girls had to endure these past years has been horrendous.”
“He was abusive to them and made their lives a misery”, one neighbour told The Daily Mail.
“And to cap it off, he kidnapped their cat and dumped it on the streets.”
Slug pellets, which contain metaldehyde or methiocarb, are potentially dangerous to animals and children. Metaldehyde is officially classed as “moderately hazardous” by the World Health Organisation, although would not usually kill an adult.
Stewart is due to appear at Manchester magistrates court at a later date.
from The Telegraph UK

Women were dismissed from the military for being gay at a greater rate than men last year, according to new statistics obtained by a California research group.
All the services kicked out a disproportionate number of women under the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, according to Department of Defense data obtained by the Palm Center at the University of California, Santa Barbara. The center studies gender and sexuality in the military.
The “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, implemented in 1994, bans troops who are openly gay from serving in the military.
In the Air Force, a majority of those removed were women, the first time a service has had such a record since the implementation of the controversial law in 1994, according to Palm Center senior research fellow Nathaniel Frank.
In fiscal year 2008, the Air Force dismissed 56 women and 34 men.
In addition, the Army removed more women under the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy at a greater rate than men when compared with the ratio of women to men in each service.
Of those discharged under the policy, 36 percent were women, although women make up only 14 percent of troops in the Army, the data showed.
from CNN

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – A gay woman who believed having a career as a Los Angeles police officer was her calling saw her dream shattered when she was fired because of her sexual orientation, her attorney told a jury Tuesday.
In his opening statement in the trial of Shelby Feldmeier’s lawsuit against the city, lawyer Alan I. Schimmel said his client could only find part- time security guard work after being terminated from the LAPD.
“What the LAPD did to Shelby was a death sentence to her career,” Schimmel told the Los Angeles Superior Court jury.
But Deputy City Attorney Richard H. Loomis said being gay had nothing to with Feldmeier being let go after her probationary period. Instead, lying to her superiors was her downfall when she told them she needed a day off to care for her girlfriend after the latter took part in the April 2004 Baker-to-Vegas police officer run, Loomis said.
The other woman — a Long Beach police officer — later denied she was ill, according to Loomis.
“The LAPD is not going to put officers on the streets — with guns and bullets — that they cannot trust,” Loomis said.
Feldmeier, 31, filed her lawsuit in January 2006, alleging sexual orientation discrimination and wrongful termination. Called as the trial’s first witness, she said she went public about being gay when she was 19.
“It was a terribly difficult decision,” said Feldmeier, who grew up in Orange County.
She said she did an internship within the LAPD which led her to getting a recommendation from a supervisor to become an officer. Being gay caused her some concern after she did research on the department, but she decided to go forward, Feldmeir testified.
“I believed the only way to change something for the better was to do so from the inside,” she said.
Hired by the LAPD in July 2003, she ran into problems while still in the academy. Her Spanish instructor told her he was tired of his girlfriend and said he was hoping his next flame would be a cop, Feldmeier testified.
“He gave me this weird look,” Feldmeier said. “I’m sure he was referring to me.”
Feldmeier also said she had to fend off her firearms instructor, who returned after a few days absence and told her he had missed her.
She said she was reluctant because of her probationary status to come forward.
“At that time I was fearful that me bringing a complaint against these guys would have a negative effect on my class,” she testified.
Feldmeier graduated from the LAPD academy in February 2004 and was assigned as a probationary employee to the Wilshire Station, where male officers made frequent offensive comments about homosexuality and asked if she was gay, according to her lawsuit.
Feldmeier, a Huntington Beach resident, maintains in her court papers that her complaints about harassment and discrimination to then-Deputy Chief Michael Berkow were not taken seriously.
Berkow said sexual orientation discrimination was not a problem in the modern LAPD and never conducted an investigation, Schimmel said.
Feldmeier remained on the LAPD payroll until March 2005, according to her court papers.
In 2007, the LAPD settled a discrimination lawsuit brought by Mitchell Grobeson, the first openly gay officer in the department, that set guidelines aimed at banning discrimination against gay and lesbian officers.
from The Los Angles Independent

MOSCOW – A Moscow court on Tuesday ruled against two lesbians seeking to become Russia’s first legally married gay couple.
Irina Fedotova-Fet and Irina Shipitko said the Tverskoi District Court upheld a decision by the city’s civil registry that said Russian law defined marriage as between a woman and a man.
“We want recognition of our relationship by society and the state. We are a family already, we live together and share household chores,” Shipitko said. “We also would like to have children. That is why we want legal recognition of our union.”
Nikolai Alexeyev, a longtime Russian gay rights activist who is serving as the women’s lawyer, told reporters that they plan to fight the ruling.
“We understand quite well that it is a long road that must be taken before such unions will be recognized. But I have no doubt this recognition will come,” he said.
The two women said they planned to fly to Canada later this month to marry and then return to Russia, in a bid to force authorities to recognize the marriage.
Homosexuality was decriminalized in Russia in the 1990s, but many Russians are vehemently opposed to expansion of gay rights or gay-rights demonstrations.
from The Associated Press