SACRAMENTO (AP) – Elizabeth Edwards reiterated her support for same-sex marriage in a speech recently in Sacramento, saying the idea that it threatens heterosexual marriage is “complete nonsense.”

“I think that we have undue fear of gay marriage,” she said.

Edwards was scheduled to address a prominent gay rights group in San Francisco that night. Earlier in the day, she said she would discuss a Sacramento man who died after he was attacked by people who mistakenly thought he was gay, according to his friends.

The death of Satendar Singh, 26, has galvanized Sacramento’s GLBT population and others who see it as an outgrowth of anti-gay rhetoric coming from local evangelical Christian Slavic churches.

Singh’s friends say the people who attacked him earlier this month as he was leaving a picnic at Lake Natomas were speaking Russian. Singh was punched once in the face and fell backward, hitting his head. He died July 5 after four days on life support.

Authorities are investigating Singh’s death as a possible hate crime.

At a Sacramento news conference Saturday afternoon, Edwards said she rewrote the speech she planned to give in San Francisco when she learned of Singh’s death.

As she campaigns for her husband’s presidential campaign in California, Elizabeth Edwards has staked out an independent position on gay rights.

She appeared last month at a breakfast before San Francisco’s Pride parade, where she announced her support for same-sex marriage.

The next day, her husband, John Edwards, said her position surprised even him. The former North Carolina senator opposes same-sex marriage but supports civil unions.

HARTFORD (AP) – A man accused of abusing his young son to make it look like the boy was seriously ill was arrested again Tuesday and accused of bilking his employer.

Michael Bradway, 40, of Cornwall, was arraigned on larceny and forgery charges in Hartford Superior Court. Shackled and wearing a bright yellow prison jumpsuit, he did not say anything during the short proceeding and did not enter pleas.

Authorities allege Bradway stole nearly $19,000 from Love Makes a Family, a non-profit gay rights group in Hartford, while serving as its finance and development director last year. He was fired from the job after his arrest on Sept. 20 on larceny and child abuse charges.

Judge Gary J. White set bond at $250,000 and ordered Bradway to return to court Aug. 2. He was already being held on $500,000 bond on larceny and child abuse charges.

In that case, authorities said he hatched an elaborate scam that convinced dozens of people, including his estranged wife and in-laws, that his son had cystic fibrosis. He has pleaded not guilty.

The chief state’s attorney’s office said Bradway sold a 2002 Ford Mustang worth nearly $13,000 that was donated to Love Makes a Family and kept the proceeds. Prosecutors also said he used work credit cards to pay for vacations, auto repairs, a computer and other items for himself that were valued at about $6,000.

“The facts underlying this arrest represent more evidence of Michael Bradway’s deception,” Senior Assistant State’s Attorney John Massameno said.

Messages seeking comment were left Tuesday with Bradway’s public defender.

Anne Stanback, president of Love Makes a Family, said last year that her organization found some irregularities while looking into Bradway’s work. She said the group had no reason to believe anything was wrong until he was arrested.

“It’s hard to take a financial hit, but Michael Bradway’s other victims were hurt much more seriously than we were,” Stanback said Tuesday. “We have moved past the incident, which occurred more than a year ago, and we’re focused on moving forward with our mission of marriage equality for same-sex couples.”

Bradway’s son was put in state care last year at the age of 9 and he immediately began to gain weight and thrive, court documents say. He now lives with his mother.

Authorities said Bradway began fabricating medical bills in 2001 when the boy was 5. He also put the child on a severe diet to make him thin. To duck doctors, he told school officials that the boy could not be immunized for religious reasons.

The boy frequently missed school, and authorities said Bradway convinced school officials that his son needed to take medication every two hours.

Bradway told his in-laws that the boy would probably need a lung transplant and that a hospital in Canada specialized in such cases, according to an arrest affidavit. The in-laws eventually contributed more than $38,000 for their grandson’s medical care.

The affidavit said Bradway also convinced a volunteer group of his son’s illness. The group, Landmark Volunteers, asked him to join the board and offered a donation, according to the affidavit.

The scam began to unravel, prosecutors said, when the boy’s mother, Ericka Hollander, who was separated from her husband at the time, began to question the diagnosis nearly two years ago and asked for medical records. Hollander and Bradway are now divorced and she has remarried, Massameno said.

Bradway was previously convicted in 1994 of larceny and forgery for operating as an unregistered broker in Massachusetts and embezzling $167,000, authorities said. He was sentenced to one year in prison.

MIAMI (AP) – The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Miami has settled a lawsuit in which a former altar boy claimed he was sexually abused by the same priest accused by former Congressmember Mark Foley.

The lawsuit was not connected to Foley, who resigned in scandal last year.

The unnamed plaintiff claims the Rev. Anthony Mercieca sexually abused him in the 1970s when he was an altar boy at St. James Church in North Miami. The accuser, then about 13 years old, said Mercieca molested him in the church’s bell tower after a bicycle ride together.

The lawsuit had sought more than $10 million in damages. Terms of the settlement were confidential, said the man’s attorney, Jeffrey Herman.

Mercieca retired to the European island of Malta. His attorney there, Alfred Grech, declined to comment because he was not aware of the settlement or lawsuit.

A phone message and e-mails to an archdiocese spokesperson were not immediately returned.

Foley, a Republican who represented the West Palm Beach area, resigned in September after his sexually explicit computer messages to young male pages surfaced. His lawyer later said Foley was alcoholic, gay and had been molested as a boy by a clergyman. Mercieca later said he massaged Foley in the nude and they swam naked together, but he denied having sex with Foley.

The FBI and state authorities have been investigating whether Foley violated any laws by sending the messages, but he has not been charged. His attorney has said Foley never had any inappropriate contact with underage boys.

HUNTINGTON (AP) – A judge has upheld a vote by a northeastern Indiana congregation to leave the United Church of Christ over the denomination’s recognition of same-sex marriage.

Special Judge David L. Hanselman Sr. dissolved a temporary restraining order that had prevented St. Peter’s First United Church of Christ in Huntington from leaving the United Church of Christ and denied the denomination’s claim on the assets of the church.

“The lawsuit was primarily over the church building and assets, though,” said Brian Royer, head of the congregation’s council. “The church is really the congregation, and I have personally found the congregation much stronger and the church more focused since this began.”

The restraining order had been in place since October 2005. Church members Paul Krieg and William Kruzan had won it following a 115-92 vote the month before by members of the congregation to leave the denomination. The congregation, now known as St. Peter’s First Church, had about 500 members at the time.

In his ruling Thursday, Hanselman determined that the congregational vote was proper and binding and that there had been no “division” of the church as defined by its bylaws that would trigger a transfer of its assets to the Indiana-Kentucky Conference of the United Church of Christ.

Kruzan said he was happy the matter was settled.

“I have no ill feelings toward anybody over this. I’m willing to live with the judge’s decision,” he said.

The UCC’s 25th Synod in July 2005 passed a resolution in support of equal marriage rights for same-sex couples.

The court ruling was delayed by the illness of former Huntington Circuit Judge Mark McIntosh, who issued the restraining order. Hanselman, the circuit court judge in neighboring Wells County, was appointed special judge and heard arguments last September.

St. Peter’s has existed as a church in Huntington for 150 years. It had joined the United Church of Christ 50 years ago.

PORTLAND (AP) – A Multnomah County Circuit Judge has decided that two Oregon laws on parental rights violate the state’s constitution when applied to same-gender couples, but he said an upcoming legislative change will remedy it.

Judge Eric Bloch’s decision comes after a same-sex couple filed a lawsuit against the state last year. The couple, Jean Frazzini and K.D. Parman, had a child two years ago through artificial insemination. The child’s birth certificate recognizes only Parman – the birth mother – as the child’s parent. The birth certificate arrived at their home with Frazzini’s name crossed out.

They filed suit, saying it violated an earlier decision that found providing benefits to couples but not allowing the same benefits to same-sex couples, constitutes illegal discrimination.

Judge Bloch found in their favor and determined Oregon’s new domestic partnership law would be a solution to the problem if it is goes into effect as planned on Jan. 1.

However, the couple and the gay rights support group backing them say a signature-collection effort is already under way to delay and ultimately overturn the law.