SAN FRANCISCO (AP) – San Francisco’s annual gay pride parade is celebrating its 40th anniversary. A two-day celebration gets under way Saturday afternoon at the city’s Civic Center Plaza and includes numerous concerts and events leading up to the popular parade Sunday. San Francisco Pride Executive Director Amy Andre says the fight for equal rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people has come a long way since the first pride celebration in 1970. At the time, gay sex was a crime in California. This year, U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is scheduled to deliver a pre-recorded address after the parade. Andre says Pelosi will be the highest ranking federal official ever to address a pride event. The theme of this year’s celebration is “40 and Fabulous.”

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) – One person is dead after a shooting in San Francisco during a gay pride street party. The San Francisco medical examiner’s office said Sunday that 19-year-old Stephen Powell had died. Powell’s cause of death has not been determined but he was one of three people shot Saturday night during the city’s “Pink Saturday” celebrations. Police say the two other people who were shot, a 19-year-old woman and a 29-year-old man, were injured but are expected to survive. A 19-year-old man is in custody. The 40th annual gay pride weekend drew thousands to Civic Center Plaza Saturday, and more were expected Sunday for the parade, a concert and comments from U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) – San Francisco police say two men were shot while attending a vigil for a teen who was gunned down at a weekend gay pride event. The men – ages 20 and 21 – were shot around 8 p.m. Monday at a gathering for 19-year-old Stephen Powell in the city’s Bayview district. Their injuries are not considered life-threatening. Investigators have not determined a motive for the shooting nor identified any suspects. Sgt. Troy Dangerfield says the victims are not being cooperative. Powell was shot multiple times during a street party in the Castro district late Saturday night. Police have arrested 20-year-old Ed Perkins on suspicion of murder and say at least one other person was involved. Dangerfield says Powell’s shooting was gang-related.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - A San Francisco man arrested in connection with a fatal shooting at a weekend gay pride event is no longer considered a suspect in the death.

Authorities say the .357 revolver found on 20-year-old Ed Perkins was not the weapon used to kill 19-year-old Stephen Powell in San Francisco’s Castro district late Saturday. Witnesses did not place Perkins at the scene of the shooting.

Perkins initially was arrested on suspicion of murder, but is now only facing charges of possessing a concealed weapon and possessing a loaded weapon. He’s scheduled for arraignment Wednesday morning.

Police have said they believe Powell knew his shooter. They say two innocent bystanders suffered gunshot wounds to the leg in Saturday’s attack.

HONOLULU (AP) – Gov. Linda Lingle is getting deluged with rallies, letters and phone calls as she weighs whether to allow civil unions to become law. Gay rights groups hoisted signs in favor of same-gender civil unions at the Hawaii Capitol on Tuesday, while religious leaders asked their congregations to urge the Republican governor to veto the measure. Lingle put the civil unions legislation on her potential veto list Monday, a move that bought her more time before making a final decision. She has until July 6 to veto or sign the bill, or else it would become law without her signature. Lingle’s office has received about 20,000 letters, faxes, e-mails and phone calls, most of which oppose civil unions.

PHILADELPHIA (AP) – The city of Philadelphia cannot evict a local Boy Scouts chapter from a city-owned building for refusing to admit gays, a federal jury ruled Wednesday.

The city had insisted that nonprofits given free use of its property must abide by local anti-discrimination laws, which include equal protection for gays. But the jury found the city’s reason violated the local scout council’s First Amendment rights. “We do hope that eventually national (Boy Scouts of America) will change its minds. But at this point, the Cradle of Liberty (Council) is still obligated to follow its policy,” said foreman Merrill Arbogast, 40, of Reinholds, a trucker and former Eagle Scout. In their lawsuit, the scouts had sought an injunction barring the city from evicting them, or charging $200,000 a year in rent, on their stately Beaux Arts headquarters building. While the verdict gives weight to their request, the judge did not immediately issue the ban. Instead, he told jurors the city’s anti-discrimination policy is “principled” and said he hoped the two “honorable institutions” could work something out. “The city defended this suit in a very principled way, in an area of the law that is highly nuanced - Constitutional Law - and highly unpredictable,” U.S. District Judge Ronald L. Buckwalter told jurors after the verdict.

In his view, he said, the city can still terminate the lease under the 1928 agreement, which was designed to give nonprofits free rent if they maintained the sites. However, the city must terminate the lease for a legally permissible reason, not because of an organization’s views. “From now on, the Boy Scouts will be negotiating from a position of strength,” said lawyer Jason Gosselin, who represents the scouts. “The city can’t come in and impose its views on what the scouts ought to do.” He hopes negotiations with the city will resume. The city was reviewing its legal options. “While the good work of the Boy Scouts cannot be disputed, the city remains steadfast in its commitment to prevent its facilities from being used to disadvantage certain groups,” the city said in a statement.

The eight-day trial followed a decade of sometimes heated discussions stemming from a 2000 Supreme Court decision that said the Boy Scouts, as a private group, can exclude gays from membership. Some public and private donors around the country withdrew support. In Philadelphia, the Cradle of Liberty Council tried to walk a fine line between appeasing the city, the United Way and other supporters and the Irving, Texas-based Boy Scouts of America. In 2003, it enacted its own nondiscrimination policy but was forced to retrench when the Boy Scouts of America ordered it to conform with national rules. The chapter later enacted a statement that says it doesn’t tolerate illegal discrimination. “We felt that they were between a rock and a hard place,” said Arbogast, the jury foreman. There has been just one known case of a gay scout being ousted from the Philadelphia chapter, although the city argued that many more may be scared off by the national policy. Greg Lattera, 25, testified that scouting meant the world to him as an inner-city child. He said he did not intend to become a flag bearer for gay rights when he spoke about being gay while wearing his scout uniform in a TV news interview. “We felt he was used as a pawn for certain groups’ agendas,” Arbogast said.

WASHINGTON (AP) – An organization representing soldiers’ families says Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan’s position on military recruitment at Harvard Law School is “troubling and appalling.” The nonprofit group Military Families United has written to leaders of the Senate Judiciary Committee to urge that senators demand answers from Kagan, a former Harvard law dean. Confirmation hearings begin Monday. Kagan briefly denied military recruiters access to the law school’s career services office because of the military’s ban on openly gay soldiers, which violated Harvard’s policy against employers who discriminated in hiring. The group said it wasn’t taking a position on Kagan’s confirmation.