SACRAMENTO (AP) – The California Senate urged Congress to reject a constitutional amendment that would ban same-sex marriages.

By a 21-13 vote, senators approved a resolution by Assemblymember Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, that urges Congress to reject any legislation that would “prohibit or restrict” the rights of same-sex couples.

Last month, the U.S. Senate scuttled an amendment banning same-sex marriage, but supporters said they wouldn’t give up.

A little over a week later, the House of Representatives approved legislation that would bar federal judges from ordering states to recognize same-sex marriages that took place in other states.

State Sen. Sheila Kuehl, D-Santa Monica, said approval of an amendment banning same-sex marriages would go against a tradition of changing the Constitution to “further protect the rights, liberty and freedom of the American people.”

The resolution returns to the state Assembly, which adopted a slightly different version of the measure in June.

DAVIS, Calif. (AP) – A high school student accused of vandalizing the cars of a gay man and an African American family will not face hate crime charges, the Yolo County District Attorney’s office said.

Saying there was not sufficient evidence to prosecute the case as a hate crime, prosecutors told a judge that instead the 16-year-old will face felony and misdemeanor counts related to property damage caused during the October incident.

The juvenile court hearing was closed to the public. The defendant, who has not been identified, is expected to enter a guilty plea at his upcoming court hearing next month.

LOS ANGELES (AP) – A dispute over the role of gay clergy has driven two Episcopal parishes in Southern California to break off their affiliation with the national church.

The announcement by All Saints Church in Long Beach and St. James Church in Newport Beach marked the first time any of the 147 parishes in the six-county Los Angeles Episcopal Diocese has opted to break off relations with the 2.3 million-member national Episcopal Church.

Leaders of the two churches said the Episcopal Church has been drifting away from its conservative values for the past three decades. Most recently, the church’s national convention confirmed an openly gay man.

The 12-member boards of directors, or vestries, of both parishes voted unanimously to break with the Anglican Communion. Parishioners backed their vestries’ decisions in overwhelming votes.

The churches will now put themselves under the jurisdiction of an Anglican bishop from Africa.

Cynthia Brust of the conservative American Anglican Council estimated that 45 to 50 and perhaps as many as 100 Episcopal parishes nationally had left the church in one way or another. There are 7,305 parishes in the United States.

The Episcopal Church is the U.S. member of the worldwide Anglican Communion, which claims 77 million members.

Debates over homosexuality have increasingly taken center stage with Episcopalians and many churches in the United States and Western Europe have accepted gay clergy and same-sex weddings.

However, churches in Asia and Africa uphold the authority of biblical verses that condemn homosexual relations.

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) – Backers of a constitutional amendment that would ban same-sex marriages in Ohio still don’t know if it will be on the Nov. 2 ballot, but their proposed language for the issue has been approved.

The Ohio Ballot Board unanimously approved the language proposed by the Cincinnati-based group Citizens for Community Values. The language says that if the issue passes, the state will recognize only unions between one man and one woman as marriage.

Ohio’s county boards of elections still must certify more than 390,000 signatures submitted by backers to get the issue on the ballot. They’ll need almost 320,000 of those to be valid signatures of certified voters. The deadline for certification is Aug. 27. If the petitioners fall short, they will have 10 days after that to gather additional signatures.

The adopted language reads: “Only a union between one man and one woman may be a marriage valid in or recognized by this state and its political subdivisions. This state and its political subdivisions shall not create or recognize a legal status for relationships of unmarried individuals that intends to approximate the design, qualities, significance or effect of marriage.”

An opponents’ group, Ohioans Protecting the Constitution, feels the language fails to tell voters the impact that passage of the amendment would have on public employees, spokesperson Alan Melamed told the board. The group proposed inclusion of all the government subdivisions, such as county and local government, in the ballot language.

It also proposed that the language mention that passage would preclude local governments from establishing their own benefits programs that include benefits for unmarried partners.

“We are faced with this amendment, an amendment that will have a devastating effect on this state,” Melamed said.

David Langdon, a lawyer representing the backers, said the language is taken directly from the proposed amendment.

“Let the voters vote on the language,” he said.

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) – Joined by about 40 supporters, two Utah legislators who sponsored a proposed state constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage announced the formation of an advocacy group to sway public opinion in their favor.

State Sen. Chris Buttars, R-West Jordan, told backers – many holding signs urging passage of Amendment 3 on Nov. 2. – that this is among the most critical issues to society.

Both houses of the state Legislature passed the amendment by a two-thirds majority last session, but it still needs majority approval from voters this November. The constitutional amendment would be in addition to a state law already on the books banning same-sex marriages.

So far, five states have constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage.

The fight in Utah has centered on a second part of the amendment, which sets limits more stringently than any other state with an existing amendment except Nebraska.

The Utah amendment language stipulates that no other domestic union could be recognized as a marriage or given the same legal effect as the legal union between a man and a woman.

That would likely affect a healthcare policy implemented last year extending medical benefits to domestic partners of University of Utah employees. Salt Lake City’s study of its own domestic partner benefits policy could also be scrapped.

However, co-sponsors Buttars and state Rep. LaVar Christensen, R-Draper – also co-chairs of the Defense of Marriage Alliance committee – said that argument was a “red herring.”

“What they’re really after is to try to sow confusion and fear that there are problems with part two. They’re wrong,” Buttars said.

The two argued that the second part was necessary to protect the first part against simple changes in nomenclature that would confer upon same-sex couples the same rights as marriage, such as “civil unions.”

In early August, the three candidates for attorney general announced in a joint statement their opposition to the amendment, arguing it was so poorly written that it could strip away fundamental rights for unmarried heterosexual couples.

Scott McCoy, campaign manager for Utah’s Don’t Amend Alliance, a group opposing the constitutional ban on same-sex marriage, said the attorney general candidates’ statement proved the amendment was fundamentally flawed.

“Our organization isn’t advocating for gay marriage, civil unions or domestic partnerships,” he said. “It’s about making sure we don’t put a seriously flawed amendment on the constitution that will hurt families in Utah.”