News

DENVER — Colorado’s first recognized same-sex divorce is final. Supporters of Colorado’s new civil unions law say the court ruling sets a precedent for gay couples married in other states who want to legally terminate their relationships here without uprooting their lives.

MOSCOW — A leading member of the legislative assembly of the city and region around St. Petersburg, Russia, and a co-author of the national law signed last month by Russian President Vladimir Putin which criminalizes public displays of affection between same-sex couples and events that promote gay rights, is urging the Putin administration to “refrain from selective enforcement” of the legislation.

SAN FRANCISCO — California Attorney General Kamala Harris says the elected clerk of San Diego County is improperly using the state’s legal system to try to prevent same-sex couples from getting married.

FORT MEADE, Md — The military judge in the in the Wikileaks court martial involving U.S. Army Private Bradley Manning said Monday that she will announce a verdict in the case on Tuesday.

YOUNDE, Cameroon — Police in Cameroon have refused to release two LGBT activists detained on Saturday as potential witnesses in the investigation of the murder of activist and journalist Eric Lembembe.

NEW YORK — More than two dozen national and international LGBT advocacy organizations on Monday urged New York City legislators to defend legislation banning police profiling against a veto by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, saying the infamous “stop-and-frisk policy” unfairly targets LGBT people of color.

BATON ROUGE, La. — The Sheriff’s Office in East Baton Rouge, La., that arrested at least 12 men since 2011 under a sodomy law invalidated in 2003 by the U.S. Supreme Court, now says it “should have taken a different approach” to concerns about park safety, and will no longer enforce the outdated law.

PLEASANT HILL, Iowa — Alexander (AJ) Betts, a 16-year-old gay teen, took his own life over the weekend, becoming the fifth student from a suburban Des Moines, Iowa, high school to do so in the past five years.

Pope Francis reached out to gays on Monday, saying he wouldn’t judge priests for their sexual orientation in a remarkably open and wide-ranging news conference as he returned from his first foreign trip.

PHILADELPHIA — A suburban Philadelphia woman who tied the knot with her longtime partner Sunday with a county marriage license despite the commonwealth’s ban on same-sex marriage said it was the day “that every committed couple waits for.”