Source: Los Angeles Times , Sacramento Bee , San Jose Mercury News The California Department of Public Health announced Monday that it is changing the state's marriage license form -- again. State officials changed the forms after the May state Supreme Court ruling that legalized same sex marriage. After that ruling, courts mandated state paperwork to use gender neutral language. State officials dropped the terms "bride" and "groom" and replaced them with the word "Party A" and "Party B." "Following the Supreme Court decision in May, we moved quickly...(read more) ...

Source: San Diego Union Tribune , Los Angeles Times   SAN DIEGO – A judge declared a mistrial Monday in the case of four San Diego firefighters who claimed they were sexually harassed during the 2007 gay pride parade. The jury of six men and six women was hopelessly deadlocked over the sexual harassment claim, the judge in the case said. Jurors deliberated for four days before telling Superior Court Judge Michael Anello that they were unable to reach a verdict in the case. One juror told reporters the jury was split 8-4 in favor of the firefighters, one vote ...

Source: Richmond Times-Dispatch , Associated Press via WAVY TV , Soulforce press release     Equality Riders talk with Liberty University students in Lynchberg photo: Soulforce Instead of threatened arrests, members of the LGBT Christian group Soulforce held what they characterized as a good discussion with school administrators and student at a small South Carolina Christian college. Soulforce's annual Equality Ride is meant to encourage an inviting environment for gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender students. Associated Press reports that participants in the Equality Ride sponsored...(read more) ...

      ::    Giovanni's Room , a gay bookstore in Philadelphia , celebrated its 35th anniversary last week. It's the second-oldest gay-and-lesbian bookstore in the country, behind only New York's Oscar Wilde Bookshop, launched in 1967. The store is struggling, but owner Ed Hermance , 68, says it's persistence that has allowed him to stay in business and become an institution in the Washington Square West "gayborhood," but Hernance hasn't been able to find anyone to take over the store so he can retire. "If ever a business was...(read more) ...

Source: Philadelphia Inquirer , Associated Press Rachel Maddow on set photo: Michael S. Wirtz/MCT via Detroit Free Press The success of Rachel Maddow's new primetime show on MSNBC prompts both Philadelphia Inquirer and Associated Press to profile the new cable news star. Although her show still trails ratings leader Sean Hannity on Fox News and Larry King on CNN, it did manage to edge out CNN's Larry King Live twice during its second week on the air, Associated Press reports. That counts as a ratings win for the perennially low-rated MSNBC. AP's television writer David Bauder observes...(read more) ...

Source: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette , Pittsburgh Tribune-Review , AFP , UPI , Church Times The Episcopal diocese of Pittsburgh voted Saturday to cut its ties with the church, affiliating with a conservative Anglican province in South America.   The clergy voted 121 in favor of the split, 33 against, three abstentions and two invalid ballots. Among the lay delegates, 119 voted in favor, 69 were opposed and there were three abstentions. Before yesterday's vote, most of the delegates crowded into St. Martin's Episcopal Church in Monroeville agreed the national church has lost its way...(read more) ...

Source: KNBC News , Associated Press via San Diego Union Tribune CA Prop. 8 LOS ANGELES -- Proposition 8, which would eliminate the right of same-sex couples to wed, was the topic at an emotional public hearing Thursday in Los Angeles, with supporters maintaining the measure protects children and opponents saying it violates equality and privacy rights, KNBC reports. Proposition 8 would amend the state constitution to say "only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California." The hearing, before a joint panel of the state Senate and Assembly judiciary committees...(read more) ...

Source: Boston Herald , Bay Windows , Loaded Gun New England Blade -- the Boston area gay weekly newspaper formerly known as In Newsweekly -- has stopped printing papers until further notice. The paper's publisher blamed the country's credit crisis for the company's problems. "Effective October 1, 2008, the print edition of the New England Blade will be on hiatus until further notice," the 17-year-old publication announced on its website Thursday when the print edition normally hits newsstands. The paper said in its online statement that a selection of stories that was set...(read more) ...

      ::    A new robo-call phone poll by Survey USA shows California's anti-gay Proposition 8 trailing, but by a much smaller percentage than was indicated by a recent Field Poll. The ballot measure trails narrowly in the new poll, losing 44 percent to 49 percent with a margin of error of 3.9 percentage points. The Field Poll conducted last month showed the measure trailing by 17 points.       ::    A man/woman Roseville, Calif. couple celebrated a church wedding in August, but refused to sign their marriage license because...(read more) ...

      ::    Russian officials shut down two gay clubs in St. Petersburg that were scheduled to hold the first publicly announced LGBT film festival in the city. "We are indignant, upset and distressed," said Irina Sergeyeva , one of the three organizers of the festival that was to feature 17 international and Russian films and personal appearances by a number of filmmakers, including John Cameron Mitchell , director of the much-honored 2006 film Shortbus . City inspectors claimed the two clubs were in violation of the fire code and forced them to close...(read more) ...

Source: Forbes , LA Times Blogs , Reuters , CNN Equal rights for gay couples, a divisive issue in the 2004 U.S. presidential election, produced a rare moment of near-agreement in Thursday's much-anticipated vice presidential debate between Democrat Joe Biden and Republican Sarah Palin. Both Biden and Palin said they don't support gay marriage. That's not much of a surprise, since no one on either ticket has endorsed marriage equality. But Biden said there should be "no civil rights distinction, none whatsoever, between a committed gay couple and a committed heterosexual couple...(read more) ...

Source: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette , Pittsburgh Tribune-Review A Presbyterian minister who performed a wedding ceremony in 2005 for a lesbian couple did not violate the constitution of Presbyterian Church (USA), a church court in Pittsburgh ruled today. The Rev. Janet Edwards, a minister at Community of Reconciliation church, faced charges for the second time in three years for performing the wedding ceremony of two women, Brenda Cole and Nancy McConn, in June 2005, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reports. After a day and a half of testimony, the panel of nine church officials ruled that the constitutions...(read more) ...

      ::    A month after a Key West judge declared Florida's gay adoption law unconstitutional in a separate but narrow case, a Miami case will present a new challenge to Florida's 31-year-old law that forbids gay people from adopting. Frank Martin Gill , 47, began a court fight Wednesday to adopt two children he and his partner have cared for since 2004 through the state's foster program. Gill's attorney, Robert F. Rosenwald Jr. of the ACLU, said the case boils down to a simple human equation: "What is at stake in this trial are two little...(read more) ...

Source: Capitol Media Services via Arizona Daily Sun , Arizona Republic , Cronkite News Service via Tuscon Citizen A proposed constitutional amendment to define marriage in Arizona as between one man and one woman has a narrow lead among voters, according to a new statewide poll, but support for the measure may not be strong enough for passage, opponents say. Forty-nine percent of respondents to the survey said they planned to vote for Proposition 102, while 40 percent were against it. Nine percent were undecided. [Cronkite News Service, which co-sponsored the poll, sets the number of opponents...(read more) ...

Source: Ventura County Star King shooting White supremacist material found earlier this year in a search of the 14-year-old suspect's room helped prompt Ventura County prosecutors to add hate crime charges against  Brandon McInerney, the Oxnard boy accused of shooting of an eighth-grade classmate.  McInerney is accused of the February shooting death of his classmate Larry King, 15, at E.O. Green School in Oxnard. He's being prosecuted as an adult in Ventura County Superior Court and faces a sentence of 51 years to life if convicted of all the charges. King had told friends he...(read more) ...

Source: Vancouver Sun , Globe and Mail , The Province , Vancouver 24 Hours , Burnaby Now , Xtra West The lawyer for a man accused of assaulting and breaking another man's jaw because he is a gay criticized Vancouver police yesterday for recommending he be charged with a hate crime, saying the police were "overly harsh in coming to judgment.". "We're overwhelmed by this, we still don't know what the exact charges are," said attorney Danny Markovitz. Appearing briefly in provincial court Tuesday on behalf of the accused, Markovitz asked that the matter be put over...(read more) ...

Source: Advocate , Pink News , Think Progress In a Tuesday night segment of her interview series with CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric, GOP vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin elaborated on the "gay friend" she has referred to in other forums -- a woman she says she's been close with for 30 years. [ clip at bottom of this post] She said that one of her "absolute best friends" is a lesbian, and continued: "She is not my 'gay' friend, she is one of my best friends who happens to have made a choice that isn't a choice that I ...

    ::    Google announced on its official company blog that it's joining other prominent California companies in opposing Proposition 8 . Google co-founder Sergey Brin said the company had laid aside its usual reluctance to enter the political fray because of "the chilling and discriminatory effect of the proposition on many of our employees." Earlier this summer, utility giant PG&E donated $250,000 to the No on 8 campaign. Levi Strauss & Co. announced last week they would co-chair the businesses against Proposition 8 campaign.    ...(read more) ...

Source: Missoulian , Associated Press via Missoulian Missoula, Mont. -- A district court judge ruled Monday that a woman should share custody of children she raised for years with a same-sex partner, who then sought sole custody when the relationship ended. Michelle Kulstad went to court to seek joint custody of two children -- an 8-year-old boy and a 5-year-old girl -- adopted by Barbara Maniaci. Kulstad testified last week that she provided for the children's physical, psychological and developmental needs on a day-to-day basis and "made a commitment to both of them that I would always...(read more) ...

Source: San Francisco Chronicle , Sacramento Bee , Los Angeles Times , Republicans Against 8 press release   CA Prop. 8 The first ads supporting California's anti-gay Proposition 8 campaign began airing today in California while a unique new voice opposed to the ballot measure responded with a web ad. The campaign supporting Proposition 8 unveiled the first installment in its multimillion-dollar ad campaign. It features San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom as its unwitting star. Although it's not backed by a budget that would allow it to be shown on television, a unique sixty-second video...(read more) ...