VENTURA, Calif. (AP) – A Southern California junior high school student has plead not guilty to charges that he shot and killed a gay classmate.

Brandon McInerney entered his plea on Aug. 28 for first-degree murder and other charges for the February 2008 shooting of Larry King.

Trial is set for Dec. 1.

The 15-year-old is accused of shooting King twice in the head during a computer lab at E.O. Green Junior High School in Oxnard.

McInerney, who is being tried as an adult, faces 53 years to life in prison if convicted.

Prosecutors have offered to agree to a sentence of 25 years to life if he pleads guilty to first-degree murder and a hate-crime allegation.

The Reno City Council on Aug. 26 unanimously adopted a resolution that will extend health care benefits to domestic partners, whether gay or straight, who register with the Nevada secretary of state under a new state law.

Council members say it’s an issue of fairness.

“It’s equity,” Councilmember Pierre Hascheff told the Reno Gazette-Journal. “It’s part of the cost of doing business. It’s part of the benefit package an employee gets.”

Council members do not think the action will cost the city that much money, even though they have not yet received a staff analysis of potential costs.

“We will find a way” to absorb the extra costs, City Manager Donna Dreska said.

Lee Rowland, attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, praised the council’s action.

She expects the change to add dozens of people, not hundreds, to the city’s health insurance program.

“We at the ACLU hope their action serves as a beacon so that other local governments will take the same step forward in getting full equality for all couples,” Rowland said.

Other entities offering similar benefits to employees’ domestic partners are the Washoe County School District and the cities of Las Vegas and Henderson.

The state of Nevada will begin offering health benefits to its employees’ domestic partners on July 1, 2010. But employees involved will bear the full cost of the benefits.

NEWARK, N.J. (AP) – Roman Catholic bishops in New Jersey have begun a new campaign opposing same-sex marriage.

The push comes in anticipation of a possible vote on the issue by state lawmakers after the November election.

At the bishops’ direction, a 2,300-word letter was distributed in parish bulletins last Sunday. It notes long-standing Catholic teaching that marriage is “the union of one man and one woman.”

The letter was signed by bishops of Newark, Metuchen, Trenton, Paterson and Camden and by the Byzantine bishop of Passaic.

New Jersey already recognizes civil unions for same-sex couples.

State Sen. Loretta Weinberg, a Democrat from Teaneck who is the sponsor of a same-sex marriage bill, has predicted it would pass by the end of the year.

FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) – Texas’ liquor board fired two agents and a supervisor, disciplined two other supervisors and changed several policies in the wake of a raid at a gay bar that left a customer seriously injured and led to protests, officials announced Aug. 28.

The Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission said agent Christopher Aller and agent trainee Jason Chapman, who participated in the June 28 raid at the Rainbow Lounge, were fired Friday. Their supervisor, Sgt. Terry Parsons, was not at the Fort Worth bar that night but also was fired, effective Sept. 2.

Aller and Chapman failed to report that they used force when arresting the customer or that he was seriously injured, according to a report on the agency’s investigation released earlier this month. They also were accused of participating in the raid without their supervisor’s approval, disrupting the business during the raid and wearing improper attire, the report states.

Parsons failed to ensure that the agents submitted a report on using force during the arrest, did not take appropriate action after learning they didn’t wear proper attire and did not notify supervisors that multiple arrests had been made that night, the report states.

The commission said Parsons’ direct supervisor, Lt. Gene Anderson, would be suspended without pay for three days and be on probation for six months, and Capt. Robert “Charlie” Cloud, who oversees the Dallas and Fort Worth TABC offices, has received a written reprimand. Both inadequately monitored new agents’ training and inadequately supervised Fort Worth employees and their activities, the agency said.

In announcing the disciplinary actions, the agency’s chief of field operations, Joel Moreno, said he was confident that Anderson and Cloud could make the necessary improvements.

TABC Administrator Alan Steen, who will make the final decision on any appeals, was not available to comment Friday, agency spokesperson Carolyn Beck said.

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) – Utah Gov. Gary Herbert said Aug. 27 that discriminating against gay people shouldn’t be illegal, although he would prefer it if everyone were treated with respect.

In his most definitive comments yet on gay rights, Herbert told reporters he doesn’t believe sexual orientation should be a protected class in the way that race, gender and religion are.

“We don’t have to have a rule for everybody to do the right thing. We ought to just do the right thing because it’s the right thing to do, and we don’t have to have a law that punishes us if we don’t,” Herbert said in his first monthly KUED news conference.

In Utah, it is legal to fire someone for being gay or transgender. The gay rights advocacy group Equality Utah has been trying to change state law for several years but has always been rebuffed by the Republican-controlled Legislature.

Last year, the group got Republican Gov. Jon Huntsman’s support for extending some rights to gay people, although none of the bills it backed became law.

Huntsman resigned earlier this month to become U.S. ambassador to China, leaving Herbert, who was lieutenant governor, in charge of the state until a special election in 2010.

Twenty-one states already have laws prohibiting workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, and 12 extend those laws to gender identity – California, Colorado, Iowa, Illinois, Maine, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington. Several other states protect public employees who are gay or transgender.

Will Carlson, Equality Utah’s public policy director, said Herbert’s comments show he doesn’t understand how prevalent discrimination is against gay and transgender people in Utah.

“I agree that we ought to be able to just do the right thing. Unfortunately, the Salt Lake City Human Rights Commission makes it clear that not all employers are doing the right thing,” he said, referencing a city report released earlier this summer that said discrimination was rampant.

Salt Lake City is considering an anti-discrimination ordinance, but conservative state lawmakers already are eyeing passage of a state law that would trump it.

Herbert reserved judgment on the ordinance until he’s had a chance to read it, but said he doesn’t like the idea of protected classes in general.

“Where do you stop? I mean that’s the problem going down that slippery road. Pretty soon we’re going to have a special law for blue-eyed blondes ... or people who are losing their hair a little bit,” Herbert said. “There’s some support for about anything we put out there. I’m just saying we end up getting bogged down sometimes with the minutiae of things that government has really no role to be involved in.”

Carlson said he wants to arrange a meeting with Herbert to help him understand the problems gay Utahns face.

“We don’t have an epidemic of blonde-haired, blue-eyed people getting fired or evicted. We do have a situation where gay and transgender people are being evicted and losing their jobs, not for job performance, but because they’re gay or transgender,” he said.

OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP) – Supporters of the state’s expanded domestic partnership law are suing elections officials, hoping to keep a referendum of the law off the November ballot.

Washington Families Standing Together sued Secretary of State Sam Reed in King County Superior Court on Aug. 27.

The case was assigned to King County Superior Court Judge Julie Spector. Hearings are expected early next week.