SAN FRANCISCO (AP) – Levi Strauss & Co. is putting its brand behind defeating a ballot initiative that would outlaw same-sex marriage in California.

The San Francisco-based jeans maker said Sept. 25 it has agreed to co-chair with Pacific Gas & Electric a group trying to drum up opposition to Proposition 8 in the business community.

CEO John Anderson says the move is consistent with Levi’s long history of supporting civil rights causes. It was the first Fortune 500 company to offer health benefits to the domestic partners of its unmarried employees.

In July, PG&E donated $250,000 to the campaign to defeat the same-sex marriage ban and announced it hoped to persuade other corporations to do the same.

The “No on 8” campaign has raised less money than the initiative’s sponsors.

BALTIMORE (AP) – Baltimore police are investigating a shooting of a gay man as a possible hate crime.

Police spokeswoman Officer Nicole Monroe says the shooting occurred shortly after midnight Sept. 22 in the 600 block of Howard Street. A gay couple was walking on the street when a man on a bicycle approached one of the two men and engaged him in conversation.

Monroe says the second man walked ahead several feet, heard what sounded like two gunshots and saw his companion was injured.

The man with the bike fled on foot, then returned for his bicycle and left the scene.

Police say the man who was shot is in critical but stable condition at a local hospital.

Monroe says the victim was not able to give police information on what the suspect might have said.

BOSTON (AP) – The president of a medical device company has been sentenced to three years probation and ordered to pay a $10,000 fine for conspiring to promote sales of an AIDS drug by manipulating a test for AIDS patients.

Rudolph Liedtke, president of Michigan-based RJL Sciences, was sentenced Sept. 24 in Boston. He pleaded guilty to conspiracy in 2005 for making and selling a software package that had had not been given federal approval.

Prosecutors say the software was used in a device by Serono Laboratories to boost sales of its drug Serostim. The software diagnosed some patients with AIDS “wasting” even when they didn’t have the often-fatal condition which involves severe weight loss.

Serono and its U.S. subsidiaries agreed to pay $704 million to resolve civil and criminal charges in the marketing scheme after Liedtke agreed to cooperate with prosecutors.

BOSTON (AP) – A Roman Catholic church in Boston has removed a man from lay leadership posts over a book he wrote describing himself as “a happy porn-writing Sodomite.”

Scott Pomfret served eight years at St. Anthony Shrine. The book, Since My Last Confession, mocks Cardinal Sean O’Malley and suggests some local clergy are sexually active.

Pomfret said he was amazed the friars removed him from leadership because he interviewed many for the book.

KEENE, N.H. (AP) – A Keene AIDS services agency says it’s suing Gilsum town officials, accusing them of illegally restricting who’s allowed to live at a group home run by the agency.

AIDS Services for the Monadnock Region alleges that Gilsum town officials overstepped their authority and violated the state Constitution regarding the Cleve Jones Wellness House, a residential center for people living with AIDS, HIV or chronic illness, or recovering from drug or alcohol addiction.

In 2006, after nearly a year of back-and-forth debate, the agency was granted a variance of a town ordinance that allowed it to open the house, but the town’s planning and zoning boards added nearly 30 conditions to that approval.

The suit focuses on three conditions: those prohibiting convicts who have been released from prison within the last year, substance abusers who have not been substance-free for at least a year, and people convicted of sexual offenses and violent crimes.

Earlier this year, Gilsum officials filed a lawsuit against the agency in Cheshire County Superior Court, alleging its officials had violated several of the conditions, including allowing a convicted sex offender to live at the house for several months. The agency said the conviction did not appear in a criminal background check.

A judge ruled in June the agency must meet all the conditions listed in the variance or face possible fines or closure.

CLOVIS, N.M. (AP) – The Clovis board of education will have final say on content in student publications under a new policy adopted about four months after the high school yearbook published pictures of lesbian couples.

The board voted 3-2 to pass the new publications code Sept. 23. The code also gives school principals authority to review students’ work before publication.

Clovis Municipal School District Superintendent Rhonda Seidenwurm said the school district’s previous publications code did not allow principals to review student publications.

She said the need for such a review surfaced after community groups criticized last year’s edition of the high school yearbook, the “Plainsman,” for photographs of lesbian couples in a segment about relationships.

Under the code, students can appeal a decision regarding content. The board of education will have the final say in the appeals process.

Board member Lora Harlan voted against the measure because she said she wanted to be sure the code did not conflict with state statutes.

Photos of two lesbian couples, along with narratives describing their relationships, were included in a features section titled “Do you want to go out?” Also pictured on the two-page spread were nine heterosexual couples.

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) – A new report from the Census Bureau says there’s an increasing number of gay and lesbian partners living together in Utah.

The American Community Survey shows that there was a 23 percent increase in lesbian partners living together in 2007 and a 21.5 percent increase in gay men living together.

The Census Bureau reports that there was also a 42 percent jump in the number of unmarried partners living together.

However, traditional households headed by married couples are still the dominant household in Utah. Nearly 60 percent of Utah adults are married and the state has the youngest median marriage age at 25.2 for men and 22.8 for women.

“All of those social characteristics of Mormon culture remain,” University of Utah demographer Pam Perlich said. “You see Utah becoming more diverse, but still maintaining its old Utah hallmarks.”

Utah’s average household size, including singles, is the nation’s highest at 3.11.

“The trend (nationally) is more unmarried, and Utah just stands out and says, ‘Not us,’” said Thomas Coleman, executive director of the Unmarried America singles-advocacy network. Twenty-three states now have majorities of households headed by unmarried people, compared with 38 percent in Utah, he said.

There are more people in Utah who don’t fit the norm, though.

The American Community Survey shows 33,061 Utah households with unmarried partners. That’s a jump of nearly 10,000 from the 2000 census.

Unmarried partners are found most often in the state’s urban counties. Salt Lake County had 18,358 unmarried household partnerships in 2007, of which 1,644 were same-sex couples. Utah County, the state’s second-largest, had 2,284 unmarried partnerships, 687 of which were same-sex couples.

WASHINGTON (AP) – An advocacy group is praising the District of Columbia for supporting needle exchanges in an effort to reduce the spread of AIDS.

The D.C. Appleseed Center for Law and Justice on Sept. 24 released its fourth report card since 2005 on efforts to slow Washington’s AIDS epidemic.

The city was graded in eleven areas and received an A- for its syringe-exchange efforts. The public schools, meanwhile, received the lowest grade, a C. The report cited ongoing questions about HIV/AIDS education efforts.

Overall, the report says the city is making progress on prevention and treatment strategies, but has yet to slow the spread of the disease.

Congress lifted a decade-long ban in December prohibiting D.C. from using local tax dollars to support needle-exchange programs, which distribute clean needles to intravenous drug users.

D.C. is now allocating nearly $700,000 annually to four groups involved in needle exchanges.