by Peter DelVecchio

Sean Kennedy’s killer gets three years; Lesbian teen beaten in Michigan

Stephen Andrew Moller, 19, received a three-year sentence June 11 in the May 2007 killing of openly gay Sean Kennedy, 20, in Greenville, S.C., according to greenvilleonline.com.

Moller punched Kennedy in the face outside a Greenville bar. Kennedy’s head hit the pavement, and he later died of brain injuries. Originally charged with murder and facing a life sentence, Moller was permitted to plead to involuntary manslaughter after a grand jury found “no malicious intent.”

“There was no justice for my son, Sean,” Elke Kennedy said at a June 11 press conference, according to seanslastwish.com. “The sentence … is a joke and a slap on the wrist.”

In a separate incident In Wayland, Mich., two teenage girls have been charged with aggravated assault for allegedly attacking a 14-year-old lesbian at Wayland Union High School. A fourth student videotaped the attack, which allegedly included anti-gay slurs. The victim sustained cuts, bruises and a possible broken nose.

According to a 2006 study by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, three-quarters of students said they had heard slurs such as “faggot” or “dyke” often at their schools.

Police beating of Tennessee transgender caught on tape

A video released June 17 by WMC-TV in Memphis, Tenn., shows a police officer beating a transgender woman in a Memphis police station. In the video, Officer B. McRae crosses a room towards Duanna Johnson, who had been arrested for prostitution, and hits her several times in the face.

“He was trying to get me to come over to where he was,” Johnson said. “I responded by telling him ... that my mother didn’t name me a ‘faggot’ or a ‘he-she,’ so he got upset and approached me.”

McRae allegedly hit Johnson repeatedly with handcuffs wrapped around his knuckles while Officer J. Swain held Johnson’s shoulders as she tried to protect herself. Johnson was then handcuffed and left on the floor. The tape shows a nurse entering the room and going over to McRae, allegedly ignoring Johnson’s pleas for help as she rocked back and forth in pain.

All charges against Johnson have been dropped. According to a June 18 Memphis Police Department statement, McRae has been placed on “non-enforcement status pending an administrative hearing,” and Swain, a probationary officer, has been fired. The FBI is investigating possible civil rights violations.

Gay servicemembers group condemns Pace medal

Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN), which fights anti-gay discrimination in the military, has condemned President George W. Bush’s decision to award the Presidential Medal of Freedom to former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Peter Pace, states a June 18 release.

In a March 2007 interview with the Chicago Tribune, Pace called gays “immoral,” and said, “I believe homosexual acts between two individuals are immoral and that we should not condone immoral acts.”

“Honoring Gen. Pace with the country’s highest civil award is outrageous, insensitive and disrespectful to the 65,000 lesbian and gay troops currently serving on active duty in the armed forces,” said SLDN Executive Director Aubrey Sarvis. “Our men and women in uniform are making tremendous sacrifices for our country and are looking to the President to recognize leaders who offer them praise and vision, not condemnation and scorn.”

NYC dumps oral HIV test over false positives

New York City stopped using Orasure Technologies Inc.’s oral HIV test May 27 because of false positive test results, bloomberg.com reported June 16.

The city used 60,000 of the kits last year, but false-positive rates have soared as high as 1.1 percent over the past eight months, five times what the kits’ labeling claims. The Orasure test is the only saliva test currently approved in the U.S.

“So far, false positives have not been linked to handling, storage conditions, lot numbers, clinic sites and test operators,” Susan Blank, director of the city’s Bureau of Sexually Transmitted Disease control, wrote in a June 13 e-mail.

Orasure is standing by its product. “What’s happening in New York City appears to be a slight aberration,” said Orasure spokesperson Ron Ticho. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is investigating false positive rates in other cities.

Scientists seek physical markers of “gayness”

Scientists are looking for innate physical traits that might correspond with being gay, the Los Angeles Times reported June 16. Most researchers believe homosexuality is biological, not learned, which means that at least some such “sexual orientation correlates” should exist.

There are several “possibles.” Gay men tend to have more older brothers than straight men, according to many studies, including one published last year involving 87,000 British men. Each older brother reportedly increases a man’s chances of being gay by 33 percent, says the University of Toronto’s Ray Blanchard, a reputed expert on the “big-brother effect.”

Left-handedness increases a man’s chances of being gay by 34 percent, and a woman’s by 90 percent, according to a 2000 study of 23,000 North Americans and Europeans. Theories range from the possibility that exposure in utero to other-than-normal testosterone levels, widely thought to play a role in sexual orientation, might also favor left-handedness, to the notion that maternal illness could cause both traits.

In one informal 2004 study, a researcher visited one gay beach and one straight beach, looking at roughly 500 men’s scalps from a distance. He found that hair on the heads of the men on the gay beach was 3.5 times more likely to grow in a counterclockwise whorl than that of men on the straight beach. (Clockwise is the norm.) Finally, gay men on average have longer, thicker penises than straight men, according to a 1999 study by Anthony Bogaert of Brock University in Ontario, based on a reanalysis of data from legendary sexologist Alfred Kinsey’s files collected from 1930-1960 on 5,000 gay and straight men. (Editor’s note: The numbers were based on self-measurements by Kinsey’s subjects; there is no evidence of a difference between gay and straight men with respect to an inclination to exaggerate.)

Oregon LGBT laws safe, for now

Opponents of two Oregon LGBT rights laws have conceded defeat in their effort to place repeal initiatives on the November ballot, The Associated Press reported June 16. One of the statutes recognized domestic partnerships; the other banned discrimination based on sexual orientation. Both were enacted last year. Proponents of the initiatives say they are dropping their efforts because neither measure has received a state-approved ballot title, and because the deadline for turning in signatures is July 3. But they say they will try to place the repeal measures on the 2010 ballot.

ACLU sues in firing of transgender truck driver

The American Civil Liberties Union sued Old Dominion Freight Lines June 18 for allegedly illegally firing a Tennessee male-to-female transgender truck driver, states an ACLU release. Kaylee Seals had worked for the company for two years and had received service and safe-driving awards. After Seals told her supervisor she was a transgender, Old Dominion fired her, according to the release, “for impersonating a female.” A prior federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission investigation found reasonable cause to believe the company discriminated against Seals based on sex and sex stereotyping.

Ohio court refuses to nullify lesbians’ custody agreement

An Ohio appellate court has ruled against a lesbian seeking to terminate a joint custody agreement with her former partner, the Columbus Dispatch reported June 17. In 2001, a court approved an agreement granting Denise Fairchild and her then-partner, Therese Leach, joint custody over Fairchild’s biological son. Fairchild argued that the agreement was unconstitutional under Ohio’s same-sex marriage ban. The judges acknowledged the gay marriage ban, but ruled that the more relevant state law was that giving the juvenile court jurisdiction “when one of the parties vying for custody is a non-parent.”

Quote - Unquote

“The children’s minds are being raped by the homosexual mafia.”
—Conservative radio talk show host Michael Savage responding to a listener whose son saw two men holding hands.

“We’ll keep pushing until we’re number one in the world.”
—James Bain, team president of New York City’s Gotham Knights Rugby Football Club, upon the team becoming the country’s top-ranked gay rugby team and third best in the world.

“It was the easiest coming out experience that anyone could possibly have.”
—Katherine Patrick, 18, telling Bay Windows about coming out to her parents, Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick and first lady Diane Patrick.

“I call for a change in laws that uphold stigma and discrimination, including restrictions on travel for people living with HIV.”
—United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon at a June 10 General Assembly meeting on HIV/AIDS.

Numbers as of 10 a.m., June 19

American Deaths in Iraq: 4,101 • icasualties.org

American Wounded in Iraq: 30,333 • antiwar.com/casualties

Iraqi Dead since 2003: 84,723-92,414 • iraqbodycount.org

Cost of War: $529,618,000,000+ • costofwar.com

National Debt: $9,399,272,349,793.41 • brillig.com/debt_clock

U.S. Trade Deficit: $330,081,000,000.00+
americaneconomicalert.org/ticker_home.asp