DENVER (AP) – A same-sex couple who refused to leave the Denver clerk and recorder’s office after they were denied a marriage license will face trial for a charge of trespassing.

Kate Burns and Sheila Schroeder of Englewood pleaded not guilty Tuesday to charges stemming from the Sept. 24 incident. A trial date was scheduled for Dec. 17.

Both refused to leave the clerk and recorder’s office, although it was closing.

The couple contended they should be entitled to all the federal benefits of a heterosexual married couple.

Colorado voters in November passed a ballot proposal banning same-sex marriage. They also rejected a proposal to give same-sex couples some of the same legal benefits as married spouses.

PHILADELPHIA (AP) – The local Boy Scouts chapter will have to pay an additional $199,999 in annual rent for its city-owned headquarters because it refuses to permit gay Scouts, officials said.

The organization’s Cradle of Liberty Council, which currently pays $1 a year in rent, must pay “fair market” rent in order to remain in its building downtown, Fairmount Park Commission president Robert N.C. Nix said Wednesday.

City officials say they cannot legally rent taxpayer-owned property for a nominal sum to a private organization that discriminates. The city owns the land on which the council’s 1928 Beaux Arts building sits.

Scouting officials will ask the city solicitor for details on the appraisals that yielded the $200,000 figure, said Jeff Jubelirer, spokesperson for the Cradle of Liberty Council.

The higher rent money “would have to come from programs. That’s 30 new Cub Scout packs, or 800 needy kids going to our summer camp,” Jubelirer said.

“It’s disappointing, and it’s certainly a threat,” he said.

Barring a resolution, the Scouts must vacate the Logan Square property after May 31. The Cradle of Liberty Council serves about 64,000 scouts in Philadelphia and its suburbs.

The Supreme Court ruled in 2000 that Scouts, as a private group, have a First Amendment right to bar gays from membership.

The council adopted a nondiscrimination policy in 2003 but was ordered to revoke it by the National Council, which said local chapters cannot deviate from national rules barring participation by anyone who is openly gay.

DUBLIN (AP) – Police are investigating whether an attack on a gay Bucks County man over the weekend was motivated by the victim’s sexuality.

State police in Dublin are looking for two men who assaulted 40-year-old Brett Saylor on Saturday. Saylor, who was on his way to work, was treated at Doylestown Hospital.

Saylor, who moved to the area four months ago from Louisville, Kentucky, said the two men called him abusive names indicating they knew about his sexuality. He said they did not take his money or valuables.

State police Sgt. Edward Murphy said the assailants could face a hate crime charge in addition to assault and harassment.

COLUMBIA (AP) – The mother of an openly gay man killed earlier this year outside a Greenville County bar said Wednesday she’s outraged because she has been told the teen accused of throwing the deadly punch won’t face the stiffest charge possible.

Sean Kennedy’s mother said the chief investigator in her son’s death told her a grand jury indicted Stephen Andrew Moller with involuntary manslaughter for the May 16 death of her 20-year-old son, who fell to the ground after being hit in the face in the parking lot of a bar. Police said he likely struck his head on the pavement or a curb.

Moller was initially charged with murder and has been in the Greenville County jail since turning himself in May 17.

Police have said a man punched Kennedy after saying a gay slur.

“My son was murdered because the person who killed him did not like his sexual orientation,” Elke Kennedy said of her youngest child. “Involuntary manslaughter is not justice for murdering somebody.”

Prosecutors issued a statement Wednesday saying they could not confirm what the grand jury did Tuesday because the panel meets in secret and did not issue its final public report before leaving for the day. A phone call seeking more information immediately after the statement was released was not returned.

Elke Kennedy said she will continue fighting for her son by advocating for state and federal hate crime laws that would require extra prison time and deny parole for criminals who attack homosexuals.

She said she was angry, but not surprised, by the lesser charge.

“Stop the hate and violence. It’s a vicious circle,” said Kennedy, who’s formed a nonprofit called Sean’s Last Wish. “Sometimes I feel we’re back hundreds of years when I see what happened with my son.”

Moller’s listed attorney, James Goldsmith Jr., did not respond to a message left at his listed number.

South Carolina is among five states with no hate crime laws. Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana and Wyoming are the others, according to the Anti-Defamation League. Of the 45 states and Washington, D.C., with hate crime laws, 32 cover sexual orientation, according to the organization.

Several hate crime proposals were introduced in the South Carolina Legislature earlier this year but remain in committee.

In May, authorities said the FBI would investigate whether Kennedy was targeted because he was gay. But an FBI spokesperson in Columbia said Wednesday the agency did not get involved because there is no federal hate crime on sexual orientation.

The Matthew Sheppard Act, named after a gay college freshman who died after he was beaten into a coma in 1998 in Laramie, Wyo., passed Congress last month as part of the defense authorization bill and awaits action by President Bush.

Under current federal law, hate crimes apply to acts of violence against individuals on the basis of race, religion, color or national origin.

The provision would extend the hate crimes category to include sexual orientation, gender, gender identity or disability and give federal authorities greater leeway to participate in hate crime investigations. It would approve $10 million over the next two years to help local law enforcement officials cover the cost of hate crime prosecutions. Federal investigators could step in if local authorities were unwilling or unable to act.

The White House had threatened to veto the provision as a stand-alone bill.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) – Members of the anti-gay Westboro Baptist Church are urging Fred Thompson to support its stance on homosexuality – a position on which they say the Republican presidential candidate once “saw eye to eye” with them.

Thompson was hired for a mid 1980s legal case in Kansas on the recommendation of Margie Phelps, daughter of Westboro founder Fred Phelps.

The Topeka, Kan.-based church is now best known for protesting at soldiers’ funerals, claiming their deaths are retribution for the nation’s acceptance of homosexuality.

Thompson campaign spokesperson Karen Hanretty on Wednesday dismissed the church as “a radical fringe group, looking to draw attention to themselves.”

“Their behavior at the funerals of fallen soldiers is disgraceful and reprehensible,” she said. “In no way do these people share Fred’s values.”

Church members released an open letter to Thompson this week, saying he had discussed his views on homosexuality with them while handling the case of a woman who had sued the state’s Republican attorney general for sexual harassment.

“We know what your position used to be on the homosexual question – and it was wonderful, and we saw eye to eye,” church members said in the letter to Thompson.

That statement appears to conflict with comments made by Margie Phelps to the Journal-World of Lawrence, Kan., in June about her interaction with Thompson.

“I’m quite confident he would’ve completely disagreed with everything about my faith,” she told the paper.

Phelps’ sister, Shirley Phelps-Roper, said in a phone interview Wednesday that while Thompson might disagree with the church today, he didn’t disagree then.

And yet, Phelps-Roper said, “He wouldn’t dare stand up and say that when he’s running for president.”

Thompson, a former Tennessee senator, has said he favors a constitutional amendment that bars judges from legalizing same-sex marriage but would leave the door open for state legislatures to act.

Thompson was hired in 1985 to represent Marcia Tomson Stingley, who sued Kansas Attorney General Bob Stephan, accusing him of violating a confidentiality agreement on a sexual harassment case she had filed against him.

Margie Phelps, the original attorney on the harassment case, could no longer represent Stingley because she was now a witness. She recommended Thompson because she had just read a book about his representation of Marie Ragghianti, a Tennessee official fired by the state’s governor because she refused to go along with a cash-for-clemency scheme.

Thompson won a $200,000 judgment against Stephan, who abandoned plans to run for governor because of the controversy. Stephan avoided paying by declaring bankruptcy.