NORWALK, Conn. (AP) – The Common Council has approved the use of a local park for a public event by a local troop of the Boy Scouts of America despite some concerns about the organization’s ban on gays.

The council gave a permit to the organization to hold an outing at Shady Beach.

Councilmember Kenneth Baker and Peter Wien touched off the debate when the council’s Parks Committee reviewed the Boy Scouts’ permit application to use the park for a three-hour campfire and recruitment program.

Wien and Baker opposed issuing Norwalk Cub Scoutmaster Greta DeAngelis a permit because of a national Boy Scout policy of banning gays.

But other council members, Mayor Alex Knopp and some public speakers said the city could not deny the local group its First Amendment rights of free speech and assembly.

David Rennie, finance director for the Boy Scouts’ Connecticut Yankee Council, told city officials they cannot “pick and choose” what groups to allow on public property “based on approval or disapproval of that group’s message.”

After the meeting, DeAngelis said she was “pleased that the more rational side of our Common Council came forward tonight, and I am looking forward to a great event.”

WICHITA, Kan. (AP) – Kristi Parker published the first issue of Liberty Press, the state’s only monthly publication covering gays and lesbians, 10 years ago this month.

Parker, who edits the publication, admits there are days she can’t believe Liberty Press is still going 10 years later.

“We struggled at first,” Parker said.

At one point, Parker had to sell her car to keep the business afloat. Now the publication is grossing $100,000 a year, said Vinnie Levin, managing editor of Liberty Press and Parker’s longtime partner.

Liberty Press, which averages 64 pages, has outlasted 24 other gay and lesbian publications based in Wichita, Levin said. The first issue was 12 pages; the 10th anniversary issue was 72 pages. In 1999, Liberty Press won three national Vice Versa Awards for Excellence in the Gay and Lesbian Press.

Parker, a Wichita native, saw a need for a publication to connect the GLBT communities across the state.

“It’s very easy if you’re gay in Kansas to feel isolated,” said Levin.

About three years ago, Parker and Levin, who worked on the student newspaper at Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania and at Penny Power in Wichita, made a pact that they weren’t going to continue Liberty Press if they couldn’t support themselves without other jobs.

Parker and Levin print 5,000 copies of Liberty Press, which is published in Wichita, each month and distribute it across the state. The first copy is free. Paid subscriptions also are available.

They credit their success to advertisers hoping to reach out to a niche audience.

Liberty Press also has received volunteer help. It has paid and volunteer writers and designers.

“When we first started, people jumped in to help,” Parker said. “It’s continued.”

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) – A gay rights group is asking the Internal Revenue Service to investigate the tax-exempt status of Jimmy Swaggart Ministries following the preacher’s Sept. 12 remark that he would “kill” any gay man who looked at him.

The Capital City Alliance suggested in a statement that Swaggart’s remarks disqualify his businesses from continuing to enjoy no-tax privileges.

“Capital City Alliance strongly feels that the Swaggart Businesses/Ministries should not continue to enjoy the benefits of ‘tax-free living’ when his organizations use millions of tax-free dollars to travel around and degrade taxpaying Americans,” said Joe Traigle, the group’s co-chair.

In the broadcast, Swaggart was discussing his opposition to same-sex marriage when he said “I’ve never seen a man in my life I wanted to marry.”

“And I’m going to be blunt and plain: If one ever looks at me like that, I’m going to kill him and tell God he died,” Swaggart says, to laughter and applause from the congregation. He later apologized, saying the remark was meant to be humorous.

The gay rights group dismissed Swaggart’s apology in remarks to reporters outside the federal courthouse here. “We all know that there are people out there that take these things very, very seriously,” said Randal Beach, a lawyer for the group.

Swaggart continues to enjoy a following, though it is much reduced from his glory days before a 1987 sex scandal involving a prostitute that he met in a seedy New Orleans motel. Beach made a joking remark about that episode, saying: “I’ve driven Airline Highway in Metairie but I haven’t run into him.” Swaggart has never confessed to anything more than an unspecified sin.

He didn’t immediately respond to an email message seeking comment.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) – Sprint Corp. will extend health insurance and other employee benefits to domestic partners beginning in 2005.

The Overland Park, Kan.-based telecommunications company, with 61,000 employees nationwide, disclosed the program to employees as part of a regular review of changes to benefits for next year. The expanded coverage would take effect Jan. 1.

Sprint spokesperson Jennifer Bosshardt said the move was not connected to criticism the company received earlier from the Human Rights Campaign. The gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender advocacy group ridiculed Sprint for providing insurance to employees’ pets but not domestic partners.

“We’ve been evaluating this for years, but this year, we took a broader look at it,” Bosshardt said. “We have a larger diversity and inclusion strategy. We believe it attracts, retains and motivates employees.”

Steven Fisher, communications director for the Human Rights Campaign, which is based in Washington, D.C., applauded Sprint’s action.

The group also had criticized Atlanta-based Home Depot, Ecolab Inc. of St. Paul, Minn., and Houston-based Waste Management Inc. Home Depot announced the following day that it would extend benefits to domestic partners.

Bosshardt said the company insures 130,000 people, including dependents and retirees.

GREENSBORO, N.C. (AP) – A gay-rights activist group plans to put up seven billboards this month featuring gays and lesbians in the Greensboro area to help fight prejudice.

Among those featured on the billboards, paid for by the Triad Equality Alliance, are Jeff Everette and Mike Barringer, partners of five years.

“We’re everyday people just like everybody else,” Everette said. “People need to know we’re out there trying to make a living and working alongside them.”

The ad includes their photographs and the words, “We are your neighbors … and we are gay.”

Two of the ads include gay parents with adopted children and read, “We are your neighbors … and we are gay parents.”

The billboards – three in Greensboro, three in Winston-Salem and one in High Point – will remain in place through the month of October.

The Triad Equality Alliance is a charitable nonprofit organization founded this year by local activists.

The group’s first project was billboards in Greensboro and Winston-Salem that featured the U.S. Constitution and the words, “Gay or Straight Americans deserve protection under the law.”

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) – U.S. Senate candidate Jim DeMint has reprimanded a campaign staffer for a derogatory comment she made about lesbians in an email.

Ginny Allen, director of operations for DeMint’s campaign, accidentally emailed her comments to Lisa Hall, chair of the Central Savannah River Area Rainbow Alliance, which works to raise awareness of GLBT issues.

Allen was not fired, but DeMint, currently a Republican Congress member representing South Carolina’s 4th District, said in a letter of apology that he had personally reprimanded Allen “according to office guidelines.”

“Mrs. Allen’s remarks do not reflect my beliefs or the character of the campaign,” DeMint wrote in his letter to Hall.

Hall had invited DeMint and his Democratic rival, Inez Tenenbaum, to appear at an Oct. 7 town hall meeting to discuss issues of interest to GLBT voters. Tenenbaum said she would send a representative, but DeMint’s campaign did not reply, so Hall sent a second email.

In response to that email, Allen, who apparently thought she was forwarding the email to someone else within the campaign, wrote: “come on farg give this dike a reply.” The word “farg” was a reference to the name of the person Allen intended to receive the email, campaign director Terry Sullivan said.

“It makes it no less offensive what she said,” he said. “It’s just inexcusable.”

Sullivan said Allen is still the campaign’s operations director, a position similar to office manager, and she would not be available for comment on the email.

Tenenbaum’s campaign did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

DeMint said in his letter to Hall that he was unaware of Allen’s email, but because the campaign bears his name, “I feel it is my responsibility to apologize.”

Hall said she was shocked by Allen’s comments.

“It hurt,” she said. “My parents raised me to be a Christian and not to speak hateful of anyone, even when having a disagreement with somebody.”

She said she accepted the apology but thinks Allen could use some diversity training.

Sullivan said he didn’t know whether DeMint planned to attend or send someone to the town hall meeting that was the subject of the original email.

“It’s not something that I think we were planning on attending,” Sullivan said. “I don’t know if we’re going to make it or not.”

As a three-term Congress member, DeMint has opposed same-sex marriage and supports a constitutional amendment to prohibit it nationwide.

“The government cannot approve and promote homosexuality,” DeMint says in a video on his campaign website. “If we approve gay marriages, we’ve in effect done that. We’ve changed our value system; we’ve changed what marriage means.”