ATLANTA (AP) – Sexually spread diseases continue to rise, with reported chlamydia cases setting yet another record in 2008, government health officials said Nov. 16.

Last year there were 1.2 million new cases of chlamydia, a sometimes symptomless infection that can lead to infertility in women. It was the most ever reported, up from the old record of 1.1 million cases in 2007.

Better screening is the most likely reason, said Dr. John M. Douglas Jr. of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Syphilis, on the verge of being eliminated in the United States about 10 years ago, also has been increasing lately. About 13,500 cases of the most contagious form of the disease were reported in 2008, up from about 11,500 the year before.

Unlike chlamydia, health officials think syphilis cases actually are increasing. Syphilis rates are up among both gay men and heterosexuals, said Douglas, director of the CDC’s Division of STD Prevention.

Syphilis can kill if untreated, but chlamydia is not life-threatening. Neither is gonorrhea, which seams to have plateaued in recent years. Gonorrhea cases dropped to about 337,000 cases in 2008, down from about 356,000 cases.

Girls, ages 15 through 19, had the largest reported number of chlamydia and gonorrhea cases, accounting for more than one in four of those cases. But they’re often screened more than other people, since 1993 federal recommendations that emphasize testing for sexually active women age 25 and under.

The government estimates there are roughly 19 million new cases of sexually transmitted disease annually. Experts say the most common is HPV, human papillomavirus, which can cause genital warts, cervical cancer and other cancers.

The government doesn’t ask doctors to report every HPV case, but estimates the virus causes 6.2 million new cases each year. That is an old estimate, based on data from 2000, before a vaccine against some types of HPV came on the market in 2006.

The CDC estimates there are 1.6 million new cases of genital herpes each year, but that too is an old estimate for a non-reportable disease.

The agency also estimates there about 56,000 new cases of HIV each year.

JONESBORO, Ga. (AP) – Clayton County Schools officials are investigating claims that a special education teacher threatened a student.

Spokesman Charles White said Nov. 16 that Mundy’s Mill High School teacher Randolph Forde remains on administrative leave with pay following his arrest last month.

Forde was charged with making terroristic threats against a 16-year-old student and was released on a $10,000 bond. He is scheduled to attend an employment hearing on Tuesday on possible disciplinary action.

Attorney Terance Madden represents the student and said Forde pulled him from class and asked if he was gay. He said the teacher also threatened to hit him in the mouth and asked another student to put a hit on his client.

Forde’s attorney, Borquaye Thomas, said students said Forde often plays around with them and everyone knew he joking about the reference to a hit.

BALTIMORE (AP) – A preliminary report commissioned by U.S. Roman Catholic bishops on the roots of the clergy sex abuse scandal found no evidence that gay priests are more likely than heterosexual clergy to molest children, the lead authors of the study said.

The full report by researchers at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice won’t be completed until the end of next year. But the authors said that their evidence to date found no data indicating that homosexuality was a predictor of abuse.

“What we are suggesting is that the idea of sexual identity be separated from the problem of sexual abuse,” said Margaret Smith of John Jay College, in a speech to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. “At this point, we do not find a connection between homosexual identity and the increased likelihood of subsequent abuse from the data that we have right now.”

The question has been raised repeatedly within and outside the church because the overwhelming majority of known victims were boys. As part of the church’s response to the crisis, the Vatican ordered a review of all U.S. seminaries that, among other issues, looked for any “evidence of homosexuality” in the schools.

Yet, many experts on sex offenders reject any link between sexual orientation and committing abuse. Karen Terry, a John Jay researcher, said it was important to distinguish between sexual identity and behavior, and to look at who the offender had access to when seeking victims.

The bishops had commissioned the $2 million study as part of widespread reforms they enacted at the height of the abuse crisis. The scandal erupted in 2002 with the case of one predator priest in the Archdiocese of Boston, then spread to every U.S. diocese and beyond.

Nearly 14,000 molestation claims have been filed against Catholic clergy since 1950, according to tallies the bishops have released in recent years. Abuse-related costs have reached at least $2.3 billion in the same period.

At the meeting Tuesday, Bishop Edward Braxton, of the Diocese of Belleville, Illinois, asked the researchers whether their study indicated that homosexuality should be considered when evaluating a candidate for the priesthood. In 2005, the Vatican issued a policy statement that men with “deep-seated” attraction to other men should be barred from the priesthood.

Smith said: “If that exclusion were based on the fact that that person would be more probable than any other candidate to abuse, we do not find that at this time.”

The latest findings affirmed previous reports that the rate of clergy abuse has declined steeply since the mid 1980s. Researchers found that the abuse rate peaked in the 1960s and 1970s. Most of the claims being made now involve allegations from decades ago.

NEW BRIGHTON, Minn. (AP) – A decision by the country’s largest Lutheran denomination to allow gay pastors to serve as clergy is leading an opposition group to try to form an alternate Lutheran church body.

Leaders of Lutheran CORE say at a news conference in a Minneapolis suburb that they disagree with this August’s decision on gay pastors by Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. They say they have heard from congregations and church-goers from around the country who feel the same way.

Lutheran CORE is a group within ELCA that has opposed letting gay pastors serve. They say it contradicts Scripture.

The group’s leaders say they don’t know how many ELCA congregations might join the new church body. They hope to have it begun by August.

CONCORD, N.H. (AP) – Rhetoric over same-sex marriage is escalating with an attack on New Hampshire’s Democratic Party chairman – who is gay – followed by an apology and then condemnation by a gay activist.

Mo Baxley, executive director of the New Hampshire Freedom to Marry Coalition, called Monday for Republicans to muzzle conservative radio host and blogger Doug Lambert. Lambert called Democratic Party Chair Raymond Buckley derogatory names while a webcam was streaming to the Internet last weekend. He later apologized on the blog GraniteGrok, but Baxley said the Republican Party should denounce his comments as hateful to gays a month before the state’s gay marriage law takes effect.

Party spokesman Ryan Williams condemned Lambert’s comments as “completely inappropriate, offensive and hurtful.”

DENTON, Texas (AP) – Students at the University of North Texas in Denton are voting this week to decide whether the bylaws should be changed to allow same-sex couples to run for homecoming court.

The homecoming king and queen at UNT have always been a man and a woman. But, students could change that by deciding whether or not same-sex couples and/or gender-neutral couples could be crowned.

Election results are expected next week.

If the students approve it, the change would take effect next year.