News

SYDNEY, New South Wales, Australia — An estimated 10,000 revelers marched along side 115 floats on Saturday in the annual gay pride parade that celebrates Mardi Gras in Sydney, Australia.

RALEIGH, N.C. — The North Carolina General Assembly has given final approval to a measure that would impose stronger criminal penalties for people who disrupt funerals or memorial services.

WARSAW, Poland — Lech Walesa, the Polish democracy icon and Nobel peace prize winner, has sparked outrage in Poland by saying that gays have no right to a prominent role in politics and that as a minority they need to “adjust to smaller things.”

WASHINGTON — Same-sex cohabitors report worse health than people of the same socioeconomic status who are in heterosexual marriages, according to a new study, which may provide fuel for proponents of same-sex marriage.

BOSTON — A federal appeals court will hear arguments in April in an appeal of a judge’s ruling granting a taxpayer-funded sex change for a Massachusetts transgender inmate.

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — The advance of gay rights across the United States is spreading into Puerto Rico, making the island a relatively gay-friendly outpost in a Caribbean region where sodomy laws and harassment of gays are still common.

RICHMOND, Va. — Tracy Thorne-Begland, a former U.S. Navy fighter pilot and Deputy Commonwealth’s attorney for the city of Richmond, was sworn in Friday as Virginia’s first openly gay judge.

CENTREVILLE, Va. — A California transgender woman alleges that, while on a business trip last year, she was asked to leave a suburban Washington D.C. because the manager told her “she looked different.”

MESQUITE, Texas — A Texas woman claims she is the victim of a hate crime after she was attacked in an elementary school playground for protecting a bullied four-year-old boy.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — A southeastern Kentucky town that attracted national attention when it adopted a gay rights ordinance is getting offers for a reality-based television show.