PHOENIX (AP) – Scottsdale City Council members heard from both sides and voted to extend the city’s equal-employment protection for gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender people.

“I see there is a need for doing this, absolutely,” said Councilmember Betty Drake last week.

Drake was part of the 4-3 majority voting to revise the city’s employment code.

“I think it all boils down to leadership.”

Councilmembers Jim Lane, Ron McCullagh and Tony Nelssen voted no.

They said it would be expensive and burdensome and would open Scottsdale to a whole new round of litigation. “This seems to be a solution in search of a problem,” McCullagh said. “I think this goes a long way to explain why Scottsdale is the West’s Most Overstaffed Town.”

Gays, lesbians and transgender people told council members that without protection of the law, employees would be afraid to come forward and complain about discrimination.

The move was hailed as “historic” by Equality Arizona Executive Director Barbara McCullough.

Those opposed argued that being homosexual or transsexual are life “choices” that are too vague to place into law.

“Homosexual behavior is not immutable or unchangeable. The city should not take sides in a cultural debate. This ordinance does take sides,” said Peter Gentala, general counsel for the Center for Arizona Policy.

PHOENIX (AP) – Gov. Janet Napolitano said Tuesday she wants Arizona to provide health benefits for state employees’ domestic partners for fairness.

“To me it’s an issue of employees all getting the same benefits,” said Napolitano, a Democrat who in 2003 signed an executive order barring discrimination in state hiring and personnel practices on the basis of sexual orientation.

The Department of Administration, headed by a Napolitano appointee, recently proposed changing eligibility rules for state employees’ benefits to include domestic partners and their children. The change will be considered by a Napolitano-appointed regulatory review panel early next year but would not require approval by the Republican-led Legislature.

The proposal drew support from gay-rights advocates who had lobbied Napolitano and her Republican predecessor for the change.

“It’s literally taken 20 years to have this conversation,” said Barbara McCullough-Jones, executive director of Equality Arizona. “It really provides equality for all state employees regardless of your sexual orientation, you should have the same benefits package as the person sitting next to you.”

Meanwhile, critics said the change would undermine marriage and represented irresponsible new spending at a time when the state faces a worsening budget shortfall.

According to the Human Rights Campaign, a Washington-based advocacy group, 13 states and the District of Columbia now provide their employees with domestic partner benefits.

Department of Administration Director William Bell approved the change as a way to help the state attract and retain workers, department spokesperson Alan Ecker said. “We view this as an enrichment of our benefits plan.”

The state historically has had high employee turnover rates, partly because of low pay.

The proposal was filed Nov. 7 and included in a formal posting of agencies’ proposed rule changes published Friday. State officials did not otherwise announce the proposed change, which was first reported Monday night by The Arizona Republic in an online story.

“It was done like any other rule proposal would be done,” Ecker said. “What we’ve done is open a process for public comment and hearing. We haven’t implemented anything. We’ve made a proposal that is going to take its course.”

The change would take effect next Oct. 1 – three months into the next fiscal year – and potentially affect approximately 65,000 state workers and 9,000 retirees, Ecker said.

With projections based on experiences of two Arizona cities with similar benefits, the state could end up covering 317 to 853 people, Ecker said.

The annual cost could be as low as $2 million or as high as $6 million if the department’s partial-year cost figures based on that enrollment range are extended to a full year.

The added costs would be offset by projected savings that the benefit plan will see from a variety of unrelated benefits-related changes, Ecker said.

However, House Majority Leader Tom Boone said as an individual legislator he was seriously disappointed in Napolitano “for being involved in making a proposal for new spending,” particularly one involving a “divisive issue.”

“She should not be supporting proposals that are going to cost more and exacerbate the (budget) problem even worse than it is now,” said Boone, R-Peoria.

The Center for Arizona Policy, a Scottsdale-based advocacy group for social conservatives, said the proposal would “further the homosexual rights agenda” and was made possible by Arizona voters’ rejection in 2006 of a ballot measure on marriage.

Proposition 107 included a ban on state sanction of marriage-like relationships other than marriage.

“The idea is to undercut marriage and its uniqueness and its place of distinction in Arizona public policy,” said Peter Gentala, CAP general counsel. “It’s basically downplaying marriage.”

Gentala said he didn’t immediately know what recourse, if any, opponents have other than to oppose the proposal at a state hearing on the rule change.

Sen. Ken Cheuvront, a Phoenix Democrat who lobbied for the change, said Proposition 107’s rejection may have tipped the scales.

“The governor’s office was more willing to look at it closer,” said Cheuvront, one of the Legislature’s few openly gay members. “It showed that the majority of Arizonans weren’t adamantly against (domestic partner benefits).”

However, Napolitano said voters’ rejection of Proposition 107 wasn’t a factor in her thinking. She also said the benefits change would not harm the institution of marriage.

“All it does is confirm that everybody’s entitled to the same benefits for the same work,” she said.

BOSTON (AP) – Parents who objected to discussions of gay families in their children’s classrooms have taken their case to a federal appeals court.

The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments Wednesday in a lawsuit filed by parents who sued after their son brought home a book from kindergarten that depicted different kinds of families, including a gay family.

Another Lexington couple joined the suit after a second-grade teacher read the class a fairy tale telling the story of two princes falling in love.

The parents say their rights to religious freedom and to control the upbringing of their children were violated by the school system.

A federal judge dismissed the lawsuit earlier this year, ruling that parents do not have the right to dictate curriculum in public schools.

BOISE (AP) – Eight men say they either had sex with Sen. Larry Craig or were targets of sexual advances by the Idaho lawmaker at various times during his political career, the Idaho Statesman reported Dec. 2. The newspaper identified four men and reported details of the encounters they say involved Craig.

It also reported the accounts of four other men who did not agree to be identified but who described sexual advances or encounters involving the conservative Republican, who opposes same-sex marriage and has a strong record against gay rights. Two of the identified men and one of the unidentified men told the newspaper they had sex with Craig.

Craig pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct after being accused by an undercover officer of soliciting sex at the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport and later called a news conference to deny that he is gay. The newspaper acknowledged that its report was not based on definitive evidence but said it also found no evidence to disprove the accounts of the four identified men.

Craig and members of his staff declined to comment to the newspaper. But in a statement e-mailed to the Associated Press, the senator said the newspaper’s report was “completely false” and he accused the paper of careless journalism. “It is unfortunate that the Idaho Statesman has chosen to continue to lower itself to the standards of what can best be described as tabloid journalism,” Craig said in the statement. Statesman Editor Vicki Gowler said the newspaper spent several months checking the backgrounds and details of the men’s stories. One of the men identified in the report, Mike Jones, 50, described as a former male escort, was the focus of the sex scandal involving Ted Haggard, the disgraced leader of Colorado’s New Life Church. Jones said Craig paid him $200 for sex in late 2004 or early 2005.

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) – The killing of a gay Oklahoma City man, who authorities say was targeted by white supremacists as part of a gang initiation, prompted faith leaders and gay rights activists on Tuesday to call for state and federal hate crimes legislation.

Investigators believe 62-year-old Steven Domer was strangled on Oct. 26 by two members of a white supremacist group who targeted Domer because he was gay. Darrell Lynn Madden has been charged with first-degree murder in Domer’s slaying and also has been charged with murder in the shooting death of his friend, Bradley Qualls.

Authorities allege Madden, 37, and Qualls, 26, were connected to the white supremacist group United Aryan Brotherhood and killed Madden to earn a place in the gang for Qualls.

“What we witnessed in this man’s tragic murder was not just the loss of a life, not just the senseless ending of a life by violence,” said Rabbi Russell Fox of Emanuel Synagogue.

“If we ignore the talk of violence toward those who are different from us ... we are closing our eyes to the reality that this crime was not just a crime of one perpetrator, but it was fueled by hateful attitudes, by hateful speech and by hateful ideas that have taken root and been given respectability in our society.”

Fox and other faith leaders urged federal lawmakers to approve a bill that would expand the definition of a hate crime to include sexual orientation and gender identity and would provide federal resources to help local law enforcement investigate hate crimes.

In Germany in the late 1930s, Fox said the Nazis initially targeted gays before Jewish people because it was easier to single out one group against whom prejudice already existed.

“If we allow this variety of hatred to grow and fester, it will transform into other varieties of hatred that will be directed against more of us,” Fox said.

State Rep. Al McAffrey, said he plans to file a bill to add gender and sexual orientation to the state statute on hate crimes.

Oklahoma is one of the 17 states that doesn’t include sexual orientation in its hate crime law.