BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) – AIDS Alabama is receiving $1 million in federal stimulus funds to provide housing to HIV-positive people in the state.

The organization says housing services will be offered statewide to low-income individuals who are HIV-positive and need financial assistance to prevent homelessness or to move from homelessness into permanent housing.

The Birmingham-based organization says services will include rental assistance, utility payment assistance, back rent, moving expenses and emergency hotel vouchers.

ATLANTA (AP) – A Morehouse College employee has been fired and another has been reprimanded for discriminatory comments made via their work e-mail accounts.

The fired woman was an administrative assistant in the president’s office.

After receiving an e-mail forward that included wedding photos of a gay couple, she forwarded the e-mail to others and made comments that were considered discriminatory. Morehouse president Dr. Robert M. Franklin released a statement about the incident Thursday and said the school has a no-tolerance position on discrimination.

He said the views expressed in the e-mail were the personal views of one individual and do not reflect the values of Morehouse College.

Franklin said the college has taken great strides toward building a “diverse and tolerant community.”

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) – An unlikely union has formed to oppose a ballot issue to build casinos in Ohio’s four largest cities.

The liberal group Progress Ohio stood beside the conservative values group Citizens for Community Values on Monday to oppose a proposal to build casinos in Columbus, Cincinnati, Cleveland and Toledo.

Citizens, which pushed the constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage in Ohio in 2004, is on the opposite side of Progress Ohio on nearly every issue.

Both groups support a University of Illinois professor’s findings that every $1 spent at a casino brings $3 in social costs.

Casino supporters have said their plan will bring an additional $651 million in tax revenue for the state.

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) – A group trying to recall Portland’s mayor over a sex scandal failed to gather enough signatures by Monday’s deadline, but said they would try again. Organizers of the Community to Recall Sam Adams said they did not have the 32,000 valid signatures required to put a recall on the ballot. They said they planned to use what they have so far to create a database for the next campaign, rather than submitting them to elections officials.

Jasun Wurster started the recall campaign after Adams admitted to lying about his sexual relationship with a former legislative intern who was a teenager at the time.

The admission, made shortly after Adams took office in January, resulted in an investigation by the Oregon attorney general’s office that concluded there was no credible evidence the openly gay mayor began a sexual relationship with Beau Breedlove in 2005 before the intern turned 18.

The scandal also prompted a number of editorials in various newspapers urging Adams to resign.

After failing to collect enough signatures for a recall, Wurster on Monday said a political action committee called Portland Future PAC has been formed with promises from some business leaders for about $150,000 to pay for a new recall campaign.

“It should be only a week or two to secure those commitments and get them filed with the state, and get those checks entered into our bank account,” Wurster said. “Then we will launch the new recall.”

Wurster declined to say who was contributing until the checks are cashed, partly “so Adams doesn’t have a chance to go back behind and undermine commitments.”

But Wurster said the promises to fund a new recall came from people who feel that Adams “doesn’t have the leadership to pull Portland out of the economic turmoil that we’re in.”

Calls to Roy Kaufmann, spokesman for Adams, were not immediately returned Monday.

EDINBORO, Pa. (AP) – A recent graduate from state-owned Edinboro University says a professor sexually harassed him with repeated references to the movie “Brokeback Mountain” and retaliated after he refused to date the professor.

Those allegations are contained in a federal lawsuit filed Monday by the former student, Cameron Aulner, who graduated in August.

Aulner is suing the school, some administrators and his former professor, William Chandler. Aulner claims the professor routinely made homosexual references in class and that Aulner, at first, agreed to date the professor because he feared refusal might affect his grade.

When Aulner changed his mind, he says the professor harassed him by commenting on his looks and touching him.

Chandler and school officials did not immediately return calls for comment.

MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) – A former Marine who appears on a Memphis billboard promoting equality for gay people says ignorance and misunderstanding are the enemy – not the people who exhibit the traits.

The Commercial Appeal reported that Tim Smith, now a student at the University of Memphis, spoke to a crowd on Sunday at First Congregational Church in Memphis and said, “When God made me, he didn’t say, ‘Oops.””

Vandals had defaced the billboard which featured a likeness of Smith in uniform, but it was restored. The board reads, “I’m gay and I protected your freedom.”

Five billboards around the city promoted “National Coming Out Day” on Sunday

WASHINGTON (AP) – The Supreme Court won’t get involved in a dispute between breakaway Episcopalians and their former national church over who owns a California church and its property.

The high court on Monday refused to hear an appeal from the St. James Anglican Church in the Diocese of Los Angeles. It is one of several dozen individual parishes and four dioceses nationwide that voted to split from the national church after the 2003 consecration of the first openly gay Episcopal bishop in New Hampshire.

California courts have ruled that, while St. James had the right to split off from the larger church, the congregation could not take parish property with it, even though the parish has held the deed to the church for decades.

The Episcopal Church has argued that its rules bar anyone from walking away with denomination property, which often includes large endowments and land worth millions of dollars. The conservatives who want to separate say they have spent years, even decades, spending money to maintain and improve the buildings.

Los Angeles Bishop J. Jon Bruno applauded the high court’s refusal to hear the case and urged reconcilation.

The state court ruling, however, left the door open for a return to trial court, and St. James filed a case in Orange County Superior Court earlier this year.

“Our battle is far from over,” the Rev. Richard Crocker, senior pastor at St. James, said in a statement.

St. James is now aligned with the Anglican Church of North America, a network of seceding Episcopal parishes and other congregations that was formed by theological conservatives as a rival to the Episcopal Church.

The case is St. James Parish v. Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles, 08-1579.