More than four decades after he captured women’s hearts on television’s “Dr. Kildare,” Richard Chamberlain has decided to reveal his identity as a gay man “because I’m not afraid anymore.”

“I’m not a romantic leading man anymore so I don’t need to nurture that public image anymore,” the 69-year-old Chamberlain said in an interview with “Dateline NBC.”

“I can talk about it now because I’m not afraid anymore.”

The “Dateline” interview coincided with the publication of Chamberlain’s new memoir, Shattered Love.

Chamberlain starred as television’s Dr. James Kildare from 1961-1966, and as Father Ralph, a love-torn priest, in the 1983 miniseries “The Thorn Birds.” He also starred in the 1974 movie The Towering Inferno and the 1980 miniseries “Shogun.”

“When I grew up, being gay, being a sissy or anything like that, was verboten,” said Chamberlain, who lives in Hawaii. “I disliked myself intensely and feared this part of myself intensely and had to hide it.”

The city of Davis, California, has asked state lawmakers to enact legislation allowing gay and lesbian couples to marry.

The Davis City Council passed a resolution last month that has already been sent to Gov. Gray Davis. City officials presented the resolution — dubbed the Freedom to Marry resolution — to local gay activists.

Davis joins five other cities in asking lawmakers to remove sex and gender requirements for a civil marriage license. San Francisco, Santa Cruz, Berkeley, West Hollywood and Santa Monica have already passed such resolutions.

Time has run out on legislation to allow gay and lesbian partners in Connecticut to register their relationships with the state.

“It’s not going to happen now,” said state Rep. Michael Lawlor (D-East Haven), House chair of the legislature’s Judiciary Committee.

“It appears we ran out of time,” said state Sen. Andrew J. McDonald, a Stamford Democrat and the committee’s other co-chair.

McDonald worked for several days to gather a coalition to pass an amendment that would have allowed gay and lesbian partners to register their relationships with the secretary of the state.

That would allow many of the legal rights now afforded to married couples.

McDonald said Senate leadership had agreed to allow him to insert the measure in another bill in the form of an amendment.

However, the legislative session ended on June 4.

“We have something we have to bring up this year that’s more important, and that’s the budget,” said Majority Leader James Amann (D-Milford).

Legislation in Illinois to protect gays and lesbians from discrimination is being shelved for at least another five months.

On the last day of that state’s spring legislative session, Sen. Carol Ronen said she couldn’t muster the 30 votes needed for passage.

“We’re going to keep working,” the Chicago Democrat said, adding that she might gather the necessary votes by the November veto session.

The proposal would add “sexual orientation” to a state law that bans discrimination against people for jobs, housing, public accommodations or credit. The law currently protects people from bias based on race, religion and similar traits.

Supporters had hoped the measure would become law now that Democrats control the state Senate as well as the House. But one advocate said he was not shocked and predicted more senators eventually will support the measure.

“Eventually this will pass; it will be signed by the governor and become law in Illinois,” said Rep. Larry McKeon (D-Chicago).

Critics say they don’t expect that anytime soon.

Leaders of the Catholic church in Massachusetts are catching flak because they asked pastors to remind parishioners last weekend that the church opposes same-sex marriages.

Gay and lesbian activists question whether the church, which is grappling with a sexual abuse scandal, should be advising its flock on such matters.

“I think it’s really appalling,” said Gary Daffin, a member of the Gay and Lesbian Political Caucus, who is also Catholic. “The leadership of the church right now has no moral authority to be beating up on gay people, and that’s exactly what they’re doing.”

The four bishops of Massachusetts are calling for action on same-sex marriage at a moment when the issue is pending in both the state’s highest court and the Legislature.

The Supreme Judicial Court is considering whether the Massachusetts Constitution allows same-sex marriage, while the Legislature is expected to consider this year a constitutional amendment that would define marriage as being solely between a man and a woman.

David Breen, a Gay and Lesbian Political Caucus board member and a Catholic, said, “For four decades the church was promoting and protecting priests who abused children. ... The bishops have as much credibility to speak out on marriage as Jack Kevorkian has to speak out on elder care. It makes no sense.”

Gay and lesbian students at the University of Oregon staged a “love-in” in response to a derogatory piece in the student newspaper.

The event, which led to many hugs but few kisses, drew close to 70 people to the EMU amphitheater. It was planned by members of the UO LGBTQ Alliance to counter what they felt was hate speech in a May 9 opinion piece in the Oregon Daily Emerald.

Vincent Martorano, a political science major, wrote that he had seen gay men “making out” on campus more than once and called the sight “an absolutely disturbing display.”

He also called homosexuality a disgrace to society. “I long for the days when homosexuality was viewed by society as an illness and gays opted to remain in the closet,” he wrote.

His views stirred plenty of emotion. The paper received many letters to the editor and the student editor wrote an editorial defending his decision to run Martorano’s piece.

Colin Hedrick said he took the commentary as a personal attack. The architecture major said he often kisses his boyfriend goodbye on his way to class. “Over the two years I’ve been here, I’ve seen maybe 15 or 20 people showing affection, but it’s a peck on the cheek or a hug. I’ve never seen them making out,” he said.

Shareholders of Exxon Mobil Corp. supported company management and rejected environmentalist-backed resolutions on global warming and renewable energy, as well as a proposal to add sexual orientation to its equal employment opportunity (EEO) policy.

Early results show that 27.1 percent of ExxonMobil shares voted in favor of the resolution, up 15 percent from the previous year. The figures were released during Exxon Mobile’s annual shareholder meeting in Dallas.

This is the fifth time the proposal to add sexual orientation to the EEO policy has come up for a vote and been rejected. Exxon Mobil is the largest oil company in the world and one of only 10 Fortune 100 companies that exclude sexual orientation from its EEO policy.

A federal judge has barred from evidence a Columbia, Maryland, murder suspect’s phone call that prosecutors hoped would tie him to the 1996 slayings of two lesbians who were hiking in Shenandoah National Park.

U.S. attorneys argued that Darrell D. Rice, 35, killed the couple and then used a phone number from one of the victims’ belongings to call the Spectrum Center for Gay and Lesbian Affairs in San Anselmo, California.

Authorities contend that Rice killed Julianne Williams, 24, of Burlington, Vermont, and Laura Winans, 26, of Unity, Maine, because of their sexual orientation. The two women were found bound and gagged with their throats slit.

U.S. District Judge Norman K. Moon said no evidence shows that the phone number was among the hikers’ belongings at their campsite. “The government’s argument requires too many speculations,” Moon wrote in a ruling filed last week.

The judge noted that the Spectrum number Rice called from his Columbia, Maryland, home combines two numbers the defendant dialed regularly.