Democratic Presidential candidate John Kerry issued the following statement on the 6-3 Supreme Court decision in Lawrence v. Texas, June 26.

Kerry said, “This landmark ruling is important not just to gay and lesbian Americans, but to all Americans, because it re-affirms the constitutional right of privacy that belongs to all of us. When the law is twisted to stigmatize one group of Americans, it diminishes the rights of all Americans. For years Americans have lost their jobs and even their homes through the selective application of these antiquated laws, and that is an affront to the constitutional right to privacy affirmed by the Supreme Court today. This ruling reminds us how important the Supreme Court is and why we must stand up against Bush Administration attempts to add a radical appointee to the Court who will roll back equal rights.”

When the choir rose to sing on Sunday, June 29, at Holy Family Catholic Parish in Rockford, Illinois, it was not part of the program. It was a protest.

The firing of a gay music director has split the congregation at Holy Family, the largest Roman Catholic church in this industrial city of 150,000.

Bill Stein, the music director and organist for five years, was fired June 17 after he refused church leaders’ request that he promise to lead a “chaste” life — a vow he equated with giving up his partner of 10 years, Manny Ahorrio. Stein said he neither flaunted nor hid his relationship; a few parents learned he is gay when they heard he was trying to adopt a child.

“I was fired based on church law. There was no mention of Gospel. There was no mention of what Jesus taught us: compassion, love, forgiveness and charity,” Stein said.

Stein’s supporters see hypocrisy in the firing, noting the Catholic Church is embroiled in scandal for keeping child-molesting priests in the clergy for years.

The dispute spilled out in church when both the priest’s sermon on Catholic teachings — including those on sexuality — and the choir’s unscheduled song for their fired leader drew applause from separate parts of the sanctuary.

Calls and e-mails to Holy Family were not immediately returned. Penny Wiegert, a spokesperson for the Rockford Diocese, said she could not comment on personnel matters. But she did say the Catholic Church is clear that its employees must follow church teachings, including a prohibition on sex outside of marriage.

A Kansas law criminalizing gay sex is invalid because of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on a similar Texas statute, Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline says.

Gay rights advocates in Kansas are celebrating and hope the Supreme Court will also decide to return to Kansas courts a case that involves the state’s sodomy statute.

Kansas is one of four states to ban same-sex sodomy, along with Missouri, Oklahoma and Texas. In a decision released June 26, the nation’s highest court voted, 6-3, to strike down Texas’ law as discriminatory and an intrusion on privacy.

The decision makes the Kansas law unconstitutional and unenforceable, Kline said. He is notifying county and district attorneys and other law enforcement officials of the decision, he said.

The Texas decision also should help Matthew Limon, who is appealing his sentence of more than 17 years under the state’s “Romeo and Juliet” law, said James Esseks, director of litigation for the Lesbian and Gay Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union.

Kansas law makes sex with a child under 16 illegal, no matter what the context. The “Romeo and Juliet” statute lessens the penalties when the partners are four years or less apart in age — but it specifically does not apply to same-sex couples.

In 2000, Limon was sentenced to 17 years and two months for having sex with a boy who was nearly 15 when he was 18. Kansas courts have rejected his attack on the disparity in sentencing.

Had Limon or his partner been female, the maximum sentence would have been one year and three months, Esseks said. The ACLU hoped to gain Limon’s release from the Ellsworth Correctional Facility while Kansas courts reconsider the case.

A Michigan state senator is working on a measure that would allow Michigan residents to vote to amend the Michigan Constitution to ban same-sex marriages.

Sen. Alan Cropsey (R-DeWitt) said the change would define marriage as between a man and a woman only. He said it would strengthen existing state laws that ban gay couples from marrying in Michigan.

The U.S. Supreme Court on June 26 issued a ruling striking down bans on gay sex. Also this month, an Ontario appeals court declared Canada’s definition of marriage, as the union of a man and woman, invalid and changed it to a union between two people.

“I don’t want some state judge to say this law is unconstitutional down the road,” Cropsey said about Michigan’s law banning same-sex marriages.

An amendment to the state constitution requires approval from two-thirds of each chamber of the Legislature and a majority vote from state residents. Otherwise, supporters would have to collect more than 300,000 petition signatures to get it on the ballot.

Black and Hispanic women in Michigan are being infected with HIV at a higher rate than the rest of the population in part because many of them don’t know their sex partners are bisexual, a state-federal study shows.

“I run into so many women who say they were infected by their husbands and significant others,” said Paula Sirls, 40, of Detroit, who contracted HIV from a man who had a relationship with her for 20 years before telling her he was HIV-positive.

“So I want to talk to the ladies: You need to get documented proof that he has been tested,” said Sirls. “If you’re not with him every second, you don’t know what he’s doing.”

Black and Hispanic men are more likely than white men to engage in bisexual behavior, but women of color were less likely to know their partners had sex with both men and women, according to a study conducted by the Michigan Department of Community Health and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“This is not a myth,” said study leader Eve Mokotoff, chief of HIV/AIDS epidemiology at the state health agency. “We interviewed these men and this is very real. What underlies this problem is [a lack of] acceptance of homosexuality.”

The study, to be published later this year in a medical journal, found that among HIV-infected men who had sex with other men, 34 percent of black men said they engaged in bisexual behavior, followed by 26 percent of Hispanic men and 13 percent of white men.

Of the HIV-positive women studied, 14 percent of white women knew their partner engaged in bisexual behavior, but only 6 percent of black and Hispanic women knew of such behavior by their partners.

The Supreme Court ruling knocking down Texas’ anti-sodomy law appeared to invalidate a similar Missouri statute, prompting a county prosecutor to drop charges against six men arrested in an adult theater, June 26.

Gay and lesbian activists celebrated the 6-3 ruling with rallies and parties in Missouri, where years of legislative lobbying to repeal the law had failed.

Attorney General Jay Nixon said in a statement the ruling “appears to call into question” Missouri’s law making gay sex a misdemeanor, punishable by up to one year in jail and a $1,000 fine.

Legal analysts and gay-rights activists didn’t hesitate to declare the Missouri law nullified by the ruling.

The ruling “has the effect of invalidating Missouri’s law,” said Denise Lieberman, legal director for the ACLU of Eastern Missouri.

Last year, Jefferson County Prosecutor Bob Wilkins used the statute to charge six men arrested during a raid at an adult theater. Wilkins said the activities were a threat to public health.

The ACLU, representing four of the men, challenged the constitutionality of the Missouri law. That slowed the prosecution. Associate Circuit Judge Mark Stahl said he wouldn’t rule before the Supreme Court decided the Texas case.

Wilkins said he hand-delivered paperwork to the judge dismissing the sodomy charges June 26. Lieberman said she was pleased.

The mayor of Plattsburgh, New York, Daniel Stewart, the first openly gay mayor elected in that state, said the Supreme Court ruling striking down the Texas anti-sodomy law was a “tremendous step on the road to equality” for gays and lesbians.

“It’s not the police’s business, it’s not the government’s business, and I am glad that the court saw, through wisdom and equality, and decided to strike down these archaic laws,” he told the Press-Republican of Plattsburgh.

Some conservative groups have argued that the Supreme Court’s ruling is the first step toward gay marriages.

Stewart said he now hopes they are right.

“I was always against gay marriages because of all the problems heterosexual marriages have. I didn’t want to be a part of that,” he said.

After performing more than 40 marriages as mayor and for personal reasons, he has changed his mind.

“It’s hard to perform a ceremony for someone when you know in the back of your mind that that ceremony isn’t available to you under the law,” he said.

Although the Philadelphia City Council decided in 1928 to let the Boy Scouts use nearly half an acre of city-owned land downtown rent-free “in perpetuity,” the organization’s refusal to let open gays participate is making city officials rethink the arrangement.

“We should be prepared to do something,” Councilmember Frank DiCicco said. “We should begin taxing them on that land or giving them notice that they should move on.”

The Boy Scouts built an imposing stone headquarters building on the site shortly after the city agreed to let the organization use it. Since then, the city passed a 1982 ordinance banning discrimination based on sexual orientation. The Fair Practices Ordinance forbids a group from invoking “its private character for the purpose of excluding or discriminating.”

The city administration is studying the matter, a spokesperson for Mayor John F. Street said.

“The mayor has asked us to look at the 1928 agreement and see how it squares up with or is in opposition to the Fair Practices Ordinance,” spokesperson Barbara Grant said. The Cradle of Liberty Council, which runs Boy Scout programs in Philadelphia and two suburban counties, decided in May that it would not discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation. The national organization then threatened to revoke the local council’s charter and replace the board. The local council responded in June by deciding it will not ask applicants for membership or leadership positions about their sexual orientation — but will not allow anyone who says he is gay to be a member or leader.

The Supreme Court ruling striking down a ban on gay sex in a Texas case has likely made Utah’s sodomy laws unenforceable.

Utah’s ban on consensual sodomy for unmarried consenting adults is likely to stay on the books until the state Legislature or a judge takes action. But in a 6-3 ruling, the nation’s highest court ruled that a similar law in Texas was an unconstitutional violation of privacy.

“Utah’s sodomy law can no longer be used to discriminate against gay people,” said Dani Eyre, executive director of the ACLU of Utah.

“Even though technically the law has always applied to all couples, straight and gay, the courts and agencies have treated it as if it were a justification for discrimination against gay people. They can’t do that anymore.”

She said the ruling makes Utah’s law unenforceable.

Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff filed a brief in support of the Texas law, along with Alabama and South Carolina.

“The states should not be required to accept, as a matter of constitutional doctrine, that homosexual activity is harmless and does not expose both the individual and the public to deleterious spiritual and physical consequences,” the brief said.

Shurtleff was in Israel on June 26 at a state attorneys general conference. His spokesperson said he wanted to review the decision and would have a comment sometime next week.

Meanwhile, gays and lesbians planned a celebration rally for Thursday night and hailed the ruling as groundbreaking.

“I think it’s very important that we are moving these antiquated laws from the law books to the history books,” said Michael Mitchell, Executive Director for Unity Utah. “I hope it starts to crumble the laws that divide us,” he said.

Thousands took to the streets for Seattle’s 27th annual gay pride parade on June 29.

“Everyone’s in a good mood ... enjoying having a day to come out and say we’re gay and we like it,” said Chris Toppen, 36, of Belfair.

The parade began around 11:00 a.m. at Broadway and Pike in the city’s Capitol Hill neighborhood, followed by a rally and festival at the Volunteer Park amphitheater.

Last year’s parade drew about 100,000 spectators. Police did not immediately return a call seeking an estimate of this year’s attendance.

Like many people on floats and on the sidelines, Toppen said the landmark Supreme Court ruling throwing out state sodomy laws gave this year’s parade added significance.

“It definitely makes this parade more special, because the ruling shows everybody else what we already know — there’s nothing wrong with being gay or with gay sex,” Toppen said.

About 20 protesters gathered near the start of the parade route. One man wore a sign that read, “Fear God. Love warns the wicked.”

A few feet away, a man with a plastic pink lei around his neck smiled as he held a neon-green sign that said, “God is all about diversity.”