TUCSON (AP) – A small clothing-optional guest ranch north of Tucson plans to add more than 100 new guest units and sell them as time shares, according to a principal in the resort.

The Mira Vista Resort in Marana currently has just 14 guest rooms, plus a restaurant, pool, spa, hiking trails and other facilities. Rooms rent for $90 to $130 per day.

That should change by 2009, when the resort finishes a planned expansion that includes 114 condominium-style time-share units, said David Landman, one of the owners.

Landman and five partners bought Mira Vista and opened it as a nudist vacation spot about a year ago. The resort previously was a guest ranch catering to gay, lesbian and transgender guests.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) – Elizabeth Edwards, wife of Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards, kicked off San Francisco’s annual Pride parade Sunday by splitting with her husband over support for legalized same-sex marriage.

“I don’t know why someone else’s marriage has anything to do with me,” Mrs. Edwards said at a news conference before the parade started. “I’m completely comfortable with gay marriage.”

She made the remark almost offhandedly in answering a question from reporters after she delivered a standard campaign stump speech during a breakfast hosted by the Alice B. Toklas Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Democratic Club, an influential San Francisco political organization. California’s presidential primary is Feb. 5, one of the earliest contests in the nation.

She conceded her support puts her at odds with her husband, a former senator from North Carolina, who she said supports civil unions among same-sex couples – but not same-sex marriages.

No serious presidential candidate from either major political party has publicly supported same-sex marriage.

When John Edwards was asked about same-sex marriage during a debate earlier this month, he emphasized his support for civil unions and partnership benefits but said, “I don’t think the federal government has a role in telling either states or religious institutions, churches, what marriages they can bless and can’t bless.”

CHICAGO (AP) – City officials, including Mayor Richard M. Daley, and members of the city’s gay community are hoping a new community center – the largest in the region – establishes Chicago as a national destination for gays, with resources geared toward both residents and tourists.

The Center on Halsted, a $20 million facility on Chicago’s North Side that officially opened this month, is one of the country’s only gay community centers built from the ground up by a partnership of government, private and business funding.

Designed by the architectural firm Gensler, the 65,000-square-foot, eco-friendly facility has a computer lab, office space for community organizations, a black-box theater, a gym named after tennis star Billie Jean King and a rooftop garden named for Mayor Daley.

Whole Foods Market is the center’s retail anchor, the first retailer of its size to anchor a gay community center in the U.S., organizers said.

There are 160 gay community centers around the country – from Amarillo, Tex., to Anchorage, Alaska – including about 10 new facilities each year, said Terry Stone, executive director of the National Association of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Community Centers.

Leaders around the country had considered Chicago’s lack of a central organization a void that kept the city from participating in nationwide programs, such as a get-out-the-vote campaign, said Richard Burns, executive director of New York City’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center.

“The funding priorities in the ’80s were all about AIDS funding,” Chicago’s first openly gay alderman Tom Tunney said. “This would’ve happened years ago if the AIDS epidemic did not hit so hard in Chicago and this nation.”

In other cities, however, gay communities translated the outrage over AIDS into successful fund-raising efforts for centers. The New York Gay Center was established in 1983, just as HIV/AIDS were entering the public consciousness.

In Chicago, community organizing about health issues led to the growth of the Howard Brown Health Center, a full-service clinic for the GLBT community whose initial focus was sexually transmitted diseases. Baim said successful fund raising for the clinic’s new home in the ’90s convinced donors that capital campaigns in the gay community could work.

RALEIGH (AP) – Elizabeth Edwards pleaded Tuesday with Ann Coulter to “stop the personal attacks,” a day after the conservative commentator said she wished Edwards’ husband, Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, had been killed by terrorists.

“The things she has said over the years, not just about John but about other candidates, lowers the political dialogue at precisely the time we need to raise it,” Edwards said by phone on MSNBC’s “Hardball with Chris Matthews,” where Coulter was a guest.

Elizabeth Edwards said she did not consult her husband before confronting Coulter on the air, adding that she felt the pundit’s remarks were “a dialogue on hatefulness and ugliness.”

“It debases political dialogue,” Edwards said. “It drives people away from the process. We can’t have a debate about issues if you’re using this kind of language.”

Coulter responded with a laugh, and charged that Edwards was calling on her to stop speaking altogether. She questioned why Elizabeth Edwards was making a phone call on behalf of her husband, and criticized John Edwards for “stealing doctors’ money” during his successful career as a trial lawyer.

“I don’t think I need to be told to stop writing by Elizabeth Edwards, thank you,” Coulter said.

Coulter appeared Monday on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” where she was asked about her March speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington. During that talk, Coulter used a gay slur to refer to Edwards.

“If I’m going to say anything about John Edwards in the future, I’ll just wish he had been killed in a terrorist assassination plot,” Coulter said Monday, riffing on remarks made by HBO’s Bill Maher.

He suggested in March that “people wouldn’t be dying needlessly” if Vice President Dick Cheney had been killed in an insurgent attack in Afghanistan.

With the close of the second-quarter fund-raising period approaching Saturday, the Edwards campaign quickly turned Coulter’s comments into fund-raising fodder. Edwards adviser Joe Trippi sent an e-mail to supporters Tuesday, saying critics “will stop at nothing to tear John down.”

“We are fighting back, but we need your help,” Trippi wrote. “Give what you can today.”

During the brief “Hardball’ segment, during which both Edwards and Coulter frequently interrupted and talked over each other, Coulter criticized the Edwards campaign for using her comments to raise money.

“I’m raising money on him,” Coulter cracked. “And from what I’ve read, I’m raising more money than he is.”

SEATTLE (AP) – Thousands of people lined downtown streets in Seattle on Sunday to watch the city’s Pride parade.

It was actually the city’s second parade over the weekend to recognize Seattle’s gay and lesbian population. Another march was held Saturday on Capitol Hill – the neighborhood commonly recognized for its gay population.

Sunday’s event was the second year in a row a parade has also been held downtown. But it almost didn’t happen.

The event was in jeopardy as recently as two months ago, when the organizing group, Seattle Out and Proud, threatened to file for bankruptcy, citing a $100,000 debt to the city after last year’s celebrations at Seattle Center.

But the group reorganized the event and staged the march along Fourth Avenue, with thousands of people lining the route.

Another group, the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Center, sponsored a Pride March down Capitol Hill’s Broadway Avenue on Saturday. That had been the traditional location of the parade for decades before the celebration was moved downtown last year.

“I think there was a very big divide last year, but the fact is, we’ve moved past it and we’re moving forward,” said Mark DuBois, a participant in Sunday’s parade.

“The one on Capitol Hill is for us, the [gay] community,” said Phil Goldenman, 60, vice president of the Seattle chapter of Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, at the Seattle Center on Sunday, where the parade ended with a festival. “The one downtown is for everybody to see.”

by The Associated Press

Senator Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign has announced the formation of “LGBT Americans for Hillary,” a national steering committee of more than 65 leaders who have endorsed her candidacy.

The committee will work with the campaign on several areas including political outreach, communications, policy advice and counsel and fund raising. The campaign noted that the move came on the eve of the 38th anniversary of the June 28, 1969, Stonewall riots.