LOS ANGELES (AP) – A transgender person who was born male but lives as a woman has filed a lawsuit against a Macy’s store in Torrance, alleging that managers and co-workers there treated her unfairly and humiliated her.

Jason “Jazz” Araquel sued Macy’s for gender discrimination, harassment, retaliation and wrongful termination in Superior Court Thursday.

Her attorney Eric Castelblanco says Araquel is a pre-operative male-to-female transgender individual and her managers knew that when they hired her to work in the cosmetics department in 2006.

He says Macy’s fired Araquel for alleged insubordination and using foul language in 2009.

Araquel says her co-workers harassed her and physically threw her out of the women’s restroom.

A call for comment to Macy’s was not returned Thursday night.

JOHNSTON, Iowa (AP) – A Republican legislative leader says voters will have a stark choice in the general election this fall, promising to seek an end to same-sex marriage and restrictions on abortion if his party gains control of the Legislature.

House Minority Leader Kraig Paulsen of Hiawatha says if Republicans regain legislative majorities, they would put a constitutional amendment before voters banning same-sex marriage and probably would approve abortion restrictions, though he declined to offer specifics.

All three Republican candidates for governor support requiring a woman to see a sonogram image of her fetus before obtaining an abortion.

Senate Democratic leader Michael Gronstal says his party wouldn’t support new abortion laws or a same-sex marriage ban.

BOSTON (AP) – Catholic schools in the Archdiocese of Boston welcome all children, even as they work to make sure the church’s teachings aren’t compromised, Cardinal Sean O’Malley said in a blog posting Wednesday.

O’Malley’s comments were his first public remarks about a decision earlier this month by St. Paul Elementary School in Hingham to rescind the boy’s acceptance because his parents are gay.

The archdiocese’s head of education later called one of the boy’s parents, apologized and offered to help the eight-year-old enroll in another Catholic school. The archdiocese said it is creating a policy to clarify its schools don’t bar children with same-sex parents.

“It is true that we welcome people from all walks of life,” O’Malley wrote. “But we recognize that, regardless of the circumstances involved, we maintain our responsibility to teach the truths of our faith, including those concerning sexual morality and marriage.”

O’Malley began his post with a recollection about meeting the young daughter of a murdered woman who had run a brothel while he was bishop in the West Indies. He said the woman’s daughter had left public school because she was being badly taunted, and he immediately directed that the girl be admitted to the local Catholic school.

“Catholic schools exist for the good of the children and our admission standards must reflect that,” he wrote. “We have never had categories of people who were excluded.”

O’Malley defended the Rev. James Rafferty, the parish priest at St. Paul’s, whom he said had come under “undue criticism” for the decision. One of the boy’s parents said Rafferty said her relationship was “in discord” with church teachings, which sees marriage as only between a man and a woman.

“(Rafferty) made a decision about the admission of the child to St. Paul School based on his pastoral concern for the child,” O’Malley wrote. “I can attest personally that Father Rafferty would never exclude a child to sanction the child’s parents.”

The Hingham case was similar to a situation in Boulder, Colo., in which a Catholic school said two children of lesbian parents could not re-enroll because of their parents’ sexual orientation, and the Denver Archdiocese backed the decision.

“It is clear that all of their school policies (in Denver) are intended to foster the welfare of the children and fidelity to the mission of the Church,” O’Malley wrote. “Their positions and rationale must be seriously considered.”

TULSA, Okla. (AP) – Police have arrested a 46-year-old man who claimed he was HIV positive after they say he spat on emergency workers treating him for injuries from a fire.

Police say Daniel Paul Hedge became combative Saturday with four emergency workers, flinging his head so that blood landed on them and spitting at them.

Police say Hedge told the emergency workers he was HIV positive and has hepatitis C. Jason Whitlow, a field operations supervisor for the Emergency Medical Services Authority, says one EMSA employee has been tested for the diseases and another will be soon.

Hedge was arrested at a Tulsa hospital on four complaints of spreading infectious disease and knowingly engaging to transfer HIV. He remained in the Tulsa County jail on a $50,000 bond on Monday morning.

Jail records do not indicate if he has an attorney.

ASHLAND, Ore. (AP) – Two Southern Oregon University students have been cited on charges they scrawled anti-gay graffiti in a dormitory on the Ashland campus.

The Ashland Daily Tidings reports that Ashland police cited 20-year-old Kevin Novotny and 19-year-old Blake Adkins on charges of criminal mischief. Adkins also faces a charge of intimidation.

Jonathan Eldridge, the university’s vice president for student affairs, says the students will also face a university disciplinary hearing.

The graffiti showed up last month in Diamond and Hawthorne halls.

LOGAN, Utah (AP) – Logan’s Municipal Council has approved ordinances banning discrimination in housing and employment matters against gay and transgender people.

The council approved the ordinances Tuesday on a 4-0 vote, with one member abstaining. They mirror a pair of measures passed by Salt Lake City last fall.

The ordinances make it punishable as a civil matter to make hiring and firing decisions or deny housing based on sexual orientation or gender identity. Violators will face fines of up to $1,000.

Two council members said that, between them, they got 393 e-mails in favor of the ordinances and 18 against.

Several other Utah cities have passed or are considering similar ordinances.

WASHINGTON (AP) – The top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee warned Monday that he would seek to slow Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan’s path to confirmation unless senators get full access to her files as a Clinton administration aide.

“We’re heading to what could be a train wreck,” Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama said. “I don’t believe that this committee can go forward with an adequate hearing” without all records from Kagan’s tenure as a White House counsel and then domestic policy adviser to President Bill Clinton.

Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., the Judiciary Committee chairman, last week set hearings to begin on June 28. Sessions said Republicans would ask for a delay unless senators get access to the tens of thousands of pages of Clinton-era records by then.

Sessions doesn’t have a veto over the hearing schedule, but his threat set the stage for a potential partisan showdown over the documents and the pace of Kagan’s confirmation process.

Kagan, 50, is President Barack Obama’s choice to succeed retiring Justice John Paul Stevens. Obama named her two weeks ago and asked that the Senate confirm her in time for her to join the court at the start of its new session this fall. Leahy’s hearing date would meet that timetable, paving the way for a vote in the full Senate before its monthlong August vacation.

The nation’s archivist told Leahy and Sessions in a letter last week that his staff would begin releasing the documents, which are held at the William J. Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock, Ark., by June 4 and try to accommodate the panel’s June 28 deadline.

Obama has said he won’t seek to block release of the documents by claiming executive privilege. It’s not clear whether Clinton will do so.

Kagan, who has stepped aside from her post as solicitor general to focus on her confirmation, has never been a judge and has little courtroom experience. Republicans and some Democrats are eager to examine the Clinton administration files for clues about her views and what kind of a justice she might be.

On Monday, Sessions suggested another aspect of Kagan’s past – her decision as dean of Harvard Law School to bar military recruiters from campus in protest of the ban on openly gay soldiers – was an essential factor for senators contemplating whether to support her.

Sessions called the decision “wrong,” and “not lawful.”

Kagan’s move, which she later reverseddefied a statute denying federal funding to schools that barred military recruiters – after an appeals court ruled that the law was likely unconstitutional. But that law, known as the Solomon amendment, was in force at the time while it awaited review by the Supreme Court.