LOS ANGELES (AP) – Three churches that split from the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles in a dispute over a gay bishop are asking the state Supreme Court to weigh in on who controls the parishes’ buildings.

The petition comes a little more than a month after an appeals court ruled the buildings should be placed under control of the diocese, reversing lower court rulings in favor of the parishes.

St. James Church in Newport Beach, All Saints Church in Long Beach and St. David’s Church in North Hollywood pulled out of the six–county Los Angeles Diocese in 2004, following the ordination of a gay bishop in the Diocese of New Hampshire.

They announced they were placing themselves under the jurisdiction of the Anglican Church in Uganda.

The Los Angeles Diocese sued the parishes to gain control of the properties, arguing the parishes held their church buildings in trust for the diocese and the national Episcopal Church, and were not entitled to them.

The churches claimed the diocese’s lawsuit interfered with the parishioners’ freedom of speech. They also said the congregations held deeds to the buildings.

The trial judge agreed with the parishes and said they had demonstrated they were being sued for their disagreement with the church’s views concerning the consecration of homosexual clergy. The judge also ruled the local churches owned the properties.

The 4th District Court of Appeal disagreed, and in June said, “The right of the general church in this case to enforce a trust on the local parish property is clear.”

The judges made it clear they were staying out of doctrinal dispute, saying it was irrelevant to the court’s decision.

At the time, a lawyer for the parishes said the appellate court’s decision ran counter to 30 years of legal precedent in California

COLORADO SPRINGS (AP) – A search committee at New Life Church is recommending a Texas mega-church leader replace disgraced senior pastor Ted Haggard.

The committee has nominated the Rev. Brady Boyd for the job, after conducting what it said were “dozens of hours of interviews” over eight months.

As part of the hiring process, Boyd, associate senior pastor at Gateway Church in Southlake, Texas, will preach at New Life Sunday services leading up to Aug. 27, when church members will vote whether to accept him. Boyd must win a two-thirds majority to get the job.

Haggard was fired last year after a former male prostitute alleged a three-year cash-for-sex relationship with him.

The man also said he saw Haggard use methamphetamine. Haggard confessed to unspecified “sexual immorality” and said he bought meth but never used it.

Haggard also resigned as president of the National Association of Evangelicals in the wake of the scandal.

Since Haggard’s fall, attendance has dropped more than 20 percent and giving has declined by 10 percent. Haggard had started the church in his basement and built it into a 14,000-member congregation.

Boyd, a graduate of Louisiana Tech University, served as senior pastor of Trinity Fellowship Church in Hereford, Texas, before joining Gateway in 2001.

He has experience in sales management and in TV and radio broadcasting, according to his Web site. He is married with two children.

DENVER (AP) – An Episcopal church court issued a preliminary ruling that the leader of a breakaway church is guilty of financial misconduct, officials said Wednesday.

The Rev. Donald Armstrong of Colorado Springs faces internal allegations including theft and tax fraud. The ruling was made Aug. 2 and released Wednesday.

Both Armstrong and Colorado bishop Robert O’Neill have 30 days to respond to the preliminary ruling. The court will then issue a final judgment along with recommendations for a sentence.

Armstrong, the rector of Grace Church and St. Stephen’s parish in Colorado Springs and now a member of a conservative Anglican diocese, is accused of having the church pay him $392,409 between 1999 and 2006 without authorization of the church vestry. The diocese also alleges that Grace Church failed to report $548,097 in non–salary income to the IRS, including the $392,409 in personal expenses.

Church lawyers allege the money was used for personal expenses for his wife and family and was covered up by “false and misleading” entries that Armstrong told the church’s bookkeeper to use.

Armstrong has denied the charges against him. He and his lawyer, Dennis Hartley, boycotted a church court hearing on his case last week because they say the Episcopal Church no longer has jurisdiction over him.

Armstrong’s office referred questions to church spokesperson Alan Crippen, who said Armstrong seems to have been targeted by O’Neill because of his conservative views. He said the church’s vestry has hired a forensic accountant to investigate the allegations and he expects Armstrong to be cleared.

“Then I think all of this will prove to be the embarrassment that it is to the Episcopal Church,” Crippen said.

The diocese issued a statement thanking the court for its work but diocese spokesperson Beckett Stokes declined further comment.

While the diocese was investigating Armstrong, the Grace and St. Stephen’s vestry voted in March to leave the Episcopal Church and join the Convocation of Anglicans in North America or CANA, a missionary diocese of the Church of Nigeria. They were upset about the Episcopal Church’s liberal theological teachings on issues including homosexuality but Crippen acknowledged that the Armstrong investigation sped up the action.

OCEAN TOWNSHIP (AP) - The curtain will go up this fall at Ocean Township High School on a play about the death of a gay college student.

School Superintendent Thomas Pagano reversed a decision by the principal who felt The Laramie Project might be disruptive. That decision last week led gay rights activists to plan a protest.

Pagano told The Asbury Park Press in Friday’s editions the community was overwhelmingly in favor of the play and no one had expressed support for Principal Julia Davidow’s initial decision.

Pagano told the newspaper he had received hate mail from as far away as California. It seemed “the entire universe was focused on this community,” he said.

The Laramie Project is the true story about the murder of Matthew Shepard. The gay University of Wyoming student was beaten to death in 1998.

MOUNT LAUREL (AP) – New Jersey now grants same-sex couples the same state benefits that married heterosexual couples receive, but that does not mean they can file their tax returns jointly for the 2006 tax year, a court ruled Thursday.

In an unanimous ruling, a three-judge appeals panel affirmed the state’s position that the benefits – at least regarding tax returns – did not start until Feb. 19, when same-sex couples were allowed to join in civil unions.

Maureen Quarto and Judith Prichason went to Canada, where same-sex marriage is legal, to wed in 2003. The next year, they registered as domestic partners in New Jersey so they could receive the limited benefits the state was allowing then.

Last October, the state Supreme Court ruled that New Jersey had to extend to same-sex couples all the rights that married couples are granted. But the court left it up to lawmakers to work out the mechanism for doing that.

The Legislature decided to enact civil unions, which are essentially marriages in all but name and which previously were in place in only Vermont and Connecticut.

Under New Jersey law, Quarto and Prichason were considered to be in a civil union because they are legally married in Canada.

They asked the state if they could file a joint income tax return as a symbolic measure – even though it would mean paying the state an extra $411.

The state Division of Taxation said no, reasoning that their union was not recognized in the 2006 year and that it could be hard administratively to deal with more couples filing jointly.

The couple sued, saying it was not the law that gave them the right to file joint tax returns, but last year’s state Supreme Court decision.

The court, in an opinion by Judge Jack M. Sabatino and a separate concurring opinion by Judge Edwin H. Stern, disagreed and said that ruling the other way might mean many couples could amend their previous tax filings and ask the state for refunds.

NASHVILLE (AP) – The highest court for the United Methodist Church is taking up the case of a minister who changed gender from female to male.

The Rev. Ann Gordon had spent five years as minister at St. John’s United Methodist Church in Baltimore before undergoing surgery and hormone therapy to become the Rev. Drew Phoenix.

Bishop John Schol of the Methodists’ Baltimore-Washington Annual Conference reappointed Phoenix this spring as pastor of the church, noting that the denomination’s Book of Discipline said nothing about transgender clergy.

The Judicial Council, scheduled to meet Oct. 24-27 in San Francisco, will look at whether the Board of Ordain Ministry should conduct a review if a pastor changes gender, and whether the denomination allows transgender people to be appointed as Methodist ministers at all.