LITTLE ROCK (AP) – The former head of an Arkansas’ psychological association, whose 1999 testimony disputed arguments for a ban on gay and lesbian foster parents, took the stand in the court case challenging the state regulation.

Cheralyn Powers, a former president of the Arkansas Psychological Association, was called to the stand not as an expert witness, but as a factual witness to the board’s proceedings five years ago, said plaintiffs’ attorney James Esseks.

Powers represented the professional psychologists’ group before the board while it was deciding on the ban in 1999. Powers said she analyzed research on the topic of gay and lesbian parents and advised the board on which research provided solid foundation for its public policy.

“Sexual orientation is not a meaningful way of determining who are good foster parents and who are bad foster parents,” she recalled telling the board.

The board’s attorney, Kathy L. Hall, planned to call board members to the stand to explain their policy decision. In court documents, the board has said it imposed the ban on households with gay and lesbian adults in an effort to protect children from disease, violence, sexual abuse, neglect and instability.

Hall challenged whether Powers had any research that distinguished between gays and lesbians’ ability to serve as foster parents as opposed to full-time parents, and Powers said she did not.

William Wagner of Waldron, whose son is gay; Matthew Howard and Craig Stoops of Little Rock, a gay couple; and Anne Shelley of Fayetteville, who also is gay, are plaintiffs in the case. They contend the policy violates their right to privacy and equal protection under the state and U.S. constitutions.

Dr. Frederick S. Berlin, a psychiatrist who specializes in sexual disorders, testified that sexual orientation is part of an individual’s “makeup,” ceased to be considered a mental disorder by the American Psychiatric Association in 1973 and cannot be taught or forced upon anyone.

Under the ban, the welfare board imposes an “ask, but you don’t have to tell” policy. Arkansas Department of Human Services caseworkers ask prospective foster parents if they are gay. If the potential parents say they’re not gay, the department is not supposed to challenge them.

The ban covers only foster children; there is no similar law or rule barring full adoptions by gay and lesbian individuals and couples.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which is representing the plaintiffs, said that Nebraska is the only other state to ban gay and lesbian foster parents. Florida bans adoptions by any gay or lesbian, while Mississippi bans adoptions by gay and lesbian couples.

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. (AP) – Jurors convicted Martin Hartman of first-degree murder by arson for torching an apartment, killing a gay man but the panel wasn’t convinced it was a hate crime as prosecutors alleged.

Clinton Risetter, 37, was killed in the fire on Feb. 24, 2002. Hartman allegedly told police investigators he set the blaze because Risetter was gay.

But defense attorneys argued during trial that Hartman, 40, has mental problems and he falsely confessed while in a psychotic state.

“What happened is, I went in there and I, I put his bed on fire and he died,” Hartman said on videotape shown during trial. When detectives asked why he did that, he replied: “Because he was unhappy and deserved to die.”

Hartman expressed a hatred for homosexuals numerous times during the 10-hour interrogation.

“I don’t like gay people,” he said on the videotape.

LEAVENWORTH, Kan. (AP) – The American Civil Liberties Union will represent a transsexual charged with providing false information for her marriage license application in Kansas, which defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman.

Topeka attorney Pedro Irigonegaray will handle Sandy Gast’s case on behalf of the ACLU, said Dick Kurtenbach, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas and Western Missouri.

Gast’s court appearance was rescheduled for March 31 because her attorney could not be there.

The ACLU’s involvement in the northwest Kansas case was based on “civil rights issues,” Kurtenbach said.

Gast, a 48-year-old man who lives as a woman and intends to be surgically changed to a woman, wanted to marry George “Georgi” Somers, a man who also is living as a woman. The Leavenworth couple had planned to have a wedding at a church in Topeka over the weekend.

Leavenworth County Sheriff’s deputies arrested Gast after prosecutors received a tip from Somers’ daughter, Crystal Call, that the couple planned to marry.

“I don’t know how many people have had to spend six hours in jail” because they were accused of the misdemeanor of false swearing, Kurtenbach said in Leavenworth County District Court.

Gast, who was born Edward Gast, had her driver’s license and birth certificate changed to reflect her female identity. She provided documents to that effect when the couple applied for the marriage license.

Kurtenbach said Gast had “no intention of making this into a battle over marriage laws in Kansas” when she applied for the marriage license. He called Gast’s actions “innocent” because she considered herself a female.

DETROIT (AP) – Happily involved in a relationship with a flirtatious, handsome man, Alice Renwick gave little though to the possibility of contracting HIV.

At 65, Renwick, an infection control nurse at a methadone clinic, reasoned she was too old to become pregnant and the couple stopped using condoms. But then Renwicks’s partner, a former heroin addict, discovered he was HIV-positive. When he died, she secretly knew she too was infected. In 1997, she knew for certain after being tested.

“I have no one to blame,” Renwick said. “I was alone, depressed, ego deflated.”

Renwick is just one in a population of people over 50 in which the HIV infection rate has doubled over the past five years, reaching 2,394 by January. Officials say the spike is linked to a number of factors, ranging from more active sex lives and the belief that it’s mainly a problem among the younger generation, to stigmas about sex and the elderly.

“We have failed to put an older face on HIV/AIDS,” said Frances Jackson, associate professor of nursing at Oakland University. “Many agencies that work with HIV-positive clients have failed to address this.”

The surge in infections among this demographic is particularly disturbing because the number of people 65 and older is climbing rapidly. But even as their numbers swell, awareness of the disease has not, advocates say.

“It’s still a hidden problem,” said Jackson, who researched older adults’ knowledge of, and susceptibility to, HIV in Detroit from 2000 to 2003. “We don’t want to think about older people having sex, so we don’t want to talk about it.”

POMONA, New Jersey (AP) – The widow of Martin Luther King Jr. called same-sex marriage a civil rights issue, denouncing a proposed constitutional amendment that would ban it.

Constitutional amendments should be used to expand freedom, not restrict it, Coretta Scott King said.

“Gay and lesbian people have families, and their families should have legal protection, whether by marriage or civil union,” she said. “A constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriages is a form of gay bashing and it would do nothing at all to protect traditional marriages.”

More than two-dozen black pastors rallied against same-sex marriage at a church in Atlanta, attempting to distance the civil rights struggle from the gay rights movement. They signed a declaration outlining their beliefs that marriage should remain a union between a man and a woman.

“To equate a lifestyle choice to racism demeans the work of the entire civil rights movement,” the statement said. “People are free in our nation to pursue relationships as they choose. To redefine marriage, however, to suit the preference of those choosing alternative lifestyles is wrong.”

King, the widow of the slain civil rights leader, made her comments during a speech at The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey.

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) – The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit that could put the issue of same-sex marriage on the fast track to the state’s Supreme Court.

The dispute over same-sex weddings could be heard as early as next month.

Several other legal challenges had been brought by conservative leaders and Christian pastors, but same-sex marriage opponents and supporters consolidated their lawsuits because they agree the ACLU’s suit most directly addresses the constitutional issues arising from same-sex marriage.

The civil rights group filed the suit in Multnomah County Circuit Court on behalf of gay and lesbian couples whose marriages were not recognized by the state’s Office of Vital Statistics.

Kevin Neely, spokesman for Attorney General Hardy Myers, said the state will file its response by April 5, and a decision by Multnomah County Circuit Judge Frank Bearden is expected by the end of that month under an expedited process agreed to by same-sex marriage opponents and supporters.