News

LANSING, Mich. — Officials in Lansing could end their community’s “sister cities” relationship with the Russian city of St. Petersburg due to that country’s anti-gay policies.

A federal judge in Ohio on Monday ordered state officials to recognize the marriage of a gay couple that was performed in Maryland on the death certificate of one of the men who is terminally ill, noting that he “is certain to die soon.”

SAN FRANCISCO — California’s chief law enforcement officer urged the state Supreme Court on Monday to refuse once again to stop same-sex marriages while the justices consider a legal bid to revive Proposition 8, the 2008 ballot measure that banned gay nuptials.

SANTA FE, N.M. — New Mexico Attorney General Gary King told the state’s highest court on Monday that a prohibition on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional.

MURMANSK, Russia — Four Dutch filmmakers, including an elected Dutch city official, were arrested and briefly detained in this northern Russian city Sunday on charges of “spreading homosexual propaganda” under the country’s new anti-gay laws.

OTTUMWA, Iowa — Administrators at a southeast Iowa high school have halted plans for a student production of “The Laramie Project,” but the show will go on at a local performing arts center.

MERIDIAN, Miss. — Police in Meridian, Miss., say they plan to file charges against a group of self-described Satanists for performing a same-sex ritual at the grave site of the mother of Westboro Baptist church’s founder Fred Phelps.

NEW YORK — Police in Long Island have arrested four men accused of an anti-gay attack over the weekend in which they severely beat two men while using homophobic slurs.

RICHMOND, Va. — Virginia Attorney General and Republican candidate for governor Ken Cuccinelli said in a debate on Saturday that he stands by his statements that LGBT people are “soulless” and “self-destructive.”

ABUJA, Nigeria — Nigeria’s Foreign Affairs Minister on Saturday declared that the West is trying to “impose” gay rights on the country.