New York City

She’s a leading candidate to be New York’s next mayor. She’s already one of its top Irish-American officials. Christine Quinn is also a lesbian and proud of it. And that’s why the City Council speaker won’t be marching in Saturday’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade, an event so entrenched in New York tradition that it’s older than the United States.

Long seen as a leading contender, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn formally launched Sunday what she hopes will be a history-making mayoral bid. A veteran of city politics, Quinn would be a groundbreaking mayor across two personal dimensions: She would be the first female and first openly gay mayor to lead the nation’s largest city.

NEW YORK — The New York police department is investigating the strangulation deaths of three gay men in Queens and Manhattan in recent weeks.

Ed Koch, the mayor who became a symbol of New Yok City, died at 2 a.m. Friday from congestive heart failure. He was 88.

The New York City Anti-Violence Project (AVP) said Wednesday that it has learned of two brutal murders of gay men in New York City that occurred over a three-day span of time.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and lesbian New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn have joined the growing choir of individuals calling on the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the Defense of Marriage Act.

BOSTON — Organizers of the annual St. Patrick’s Day Parade that takes place in South Boston have rejected applications submitted by two LGBT advocacy groups to participate in Sunday’s parade.

The gay rights movement has not been good about dealing with the issue of homeless gay youth, and depending on the study, somewhere between 30 and 40 percent of homeless youths identify as LGBT, reported National Public Radio, this past weekend.

“It had such an impact because the loss was about death and relationships,” said Jennifer Pizer, senior counsel for Lambda Legal, in a 2006 interview at the time of the 5th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. “The grief and loss was the same between heterosexual and same-sex couples, and a perception of this seemed to come through to much of the public.”

Marking the first full weekend of marriage equality in New York state, 24 gay and lesbian couples on Saturday wed in “pop-up” chapels in New York’s Central Park.