MILL VALLEY, Calif. (AP) – Mill Valley police and the Marin County Sheriff’s Department are investigating a series of suspected hate crimes directed at a 17-year-old Tamalpais High girl who was a member of a GLBT club, police said.

Police said the girl, her locker, her car and her Mill Valley home have been the target of repeated vandalism in recent weeks. In one incident, she told police she was pelted with eggs outside her home.

The attacks reached a new level of visibility when the vandal or vandals spray painted derogatory words on the wall of Tamalpais High’s Keyser Hall, according to police reports.

The incidents began Nov. 1, when the girl, who police said was a member of a gay and lesbian club with other students, found an anti-gay message scrawled on her locker at school. A week later, she found similar graffiti on her car at school.

A week after that, she reported finding a typewritten, threatening letter at her family’s home. Days later, she told police she had been hit with eggs while outside the home.

“She never saw who it was,” said Mill Valley police Capt. Jim Wickham. “It may be students; it’s one thing we’re looking at.”

At the end of November, more hate-related vandalism was found on a classroom door. Someone scrawled a derogatory message on Keyser Hall and more anti-gay tagging was found on two classroom doors the following day.

BRECKENRIDGE, Colo. (AP) – The Town Council in this Colorado mountain town unanimously approved an ordinance that adds sexual orientation to its anti-discrimination policies.

More than 50 people attended the meeting to speak in favor of the ordinance, while one person spoke against it. The crowd broke into applause after the vote.

Monte McClenehan was pleased the policies were expanded, saying he once was the target of discrimination because of his sexual orientation.

“People who are gay just want the same opportunities,” he said. “Not special rights. You shouldn’t be fired just because you’re gay. You should not be unable to find housing just because you’re gay.”

Physician Bill Bolthouse was the lone dissenter at the meeting, saying he wanted to present his Christian values.

“Homosexuals as a class don’t qualify for special considerations,” he said. “Why is the council bringing it up? I can only conclude that it’s due to political loyalties rather than workplace discrimination.”

ATLANTA (AP) – A march that brought thousands of people to the gravesite of Martin Luther King Jr. also drew a few dozen protesters who claimed organizers were hijacking the slain civil rights leader’s legacy to promote an agenda

The march’s organizer, Bishop Eddie Long, said his followers “did not come in a march of hatred.”

The first goal of the march listed on his church’s website is to promote a constitutional amendment to protect marriage “between one man and one woman.” Other goals were promoting education reform, affordable healthcare and programs that create wealth for minorities.

“We are not marching against folk, we are marching for folk,” Long said at a rally after the march.

The march began after King’s daughter, Bernice, lit a torch at her father’s grave and passed it on to Long, who carried it on the 2-mile march through the city. Bernice King is an elder in Long’s predominantly black 25,000-member New Birth Missionary Baptist Church outside Atlanta.

Police did not immediately provide a crowd estimate, but New Birth spokesperson Erik Burton said at least 15,000 people attended the march.

About 50 protesters gathered at the event carrying signs that read “Don’t Hijack Dr. King’s Dream” and “All Forms of Bigotry are Equally Wrong.”

“He has built this march on the legacy of Dr. King, and those of us who understand Dr. King’s legacy also understand Dr. King would never support any type of activity that would prohibit the rights of any people,” said the Rev. Antonio Jones of Atlanta’s Unity Fellowship Church.

Long has called for a national ban on same-sex marriage, and his church counsels GLBT members to abandon their lifestyle.

King’s widow, Coretta Scott King, has called same-sex marriage a civil rights issue and denounced proposed amendments to ban it.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) – Louisville Mayor Jerry Abramson criticized opponents of a civil-rights ordinance approved by the Metro council that includes protections for gays and lesbians.

“This community will not tolerate the hateful politics of division and deception that some people and, unfortunately, some elected leaders prefer,” Abramson said in a statement after signing the measure.

Louisville’s Metro Council approved the ordinance in a 19-6 vote. It prohibits discrimination because of race, religion, ethnicity, age, physical disability, gender, sexual preference or gender identity.

Some opponents argued that the city’s business community might disagree with legal protection for gays and lesbians.

“Louisville’s business leaders strongly oppose discrimination,” Abramson said. “We don’t need elected leaders sending a message to the companies and people that we’re trying to attract to this community that Louisville is a place where businesses support bigotry.”

ST. PAUL (AP) – U.S. military recruiters should be barred from the Hamline University campus because the military discriminates against gays, according to a resolution that won overwhelming support from the Student Congress.

The undergraduate student group doesn’t have the power to ban the recruiters outright, so the resolution asks university administrators to do so.

University spokesperson Rebecca Hauger said the students voted in favor of the resolution 88-15. Under the group’s rules, students holding elected positions get two votes while all other students get one, Hauger said.

Graham Lampa, the 21-year-old Brainerd senior who authored the resolution, said before the vote that he expected it to pass.

“If we are going to allow recruiters onto our campus, we want to make sure they are willing to take any of our students, not just the white students or the straight students or the rich students,” he said.

The resolution puts the administration in a tight spot because a 1995 federal law bars the government from providing money to any college or university that obstructs military recruiting.

However, the law is undergoing a legal challenge by a coalition of law schools which last month won a ruling from the 3rd Circuit of the U.S. Appeals Court in Philadelphia that the law interfered with the First Amendment rights of the schools.

The ruling by a three-judge panel of the court said universities could exclude military recruiters without losing federal money. The government has not announced whether it would appeal the ruling.

Hamline estimates that it receives more than $35 million a year in federal funds through various programs.

University vice president Dan Loritz said the university would continue to allow military recruiters on campus because the 1995 law, called the Solomon Amendment, remains in effect in Minnesota.

“The university will be monitoring the action of the courts on this issue,” he said in a statement.

WAVERLY, Ohio (AP) – Two men accused in the beating death of a 39-year-old homeless man face new charges that carry the death penalty.

Pike County Prosecutor Rob Junk now says the Oct. 2 death of Daniel Fetty is a hate crime, carried out partly because the victim was gay.

Martin Baxter, 28, of Waverly, and co-defendant Matthew Ferman, 22, of Waverly, pleaded innocent to new aggravated murder charges.

A third man, James Trent Jr., 19, of Piketon, was convicted on Dec. 6 of involuntary manslaughter and is expected to testify against the other two, Junk said. He was sentenced to seven years in prison.

Out of the view of his attorney, Baxter said he did not hurt the restaurant worker. He said it was Ferman’s anger over a missing pack of cigarettes, not Fetty’s sexual orientation, that led to the attack.

Junk would not elaborate on why he called the attack a hate crime.

AUSTIN (AP) – A Texas Department of Public Safety trooper has been placed on probation for telling two gay men who were kissing at the state Capitol that homosexual conduct was illegal in Texas.

Trooper Michael Carlson was placed on job probation for six months and given a written reprimand, said DPS spokesperson Tela Mange. Carlson, who has been a DPS trooper for three years, also has been ordered to have more training on Texas laws.

Texas law does not prohibit gays from kissing. Also, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the state’s anti-sodomy law in June 2003.

“I’m very pleased,” said John Corvino, a former University of Texas at Austin graduate student who was one of the men involved. “As someone charged with enforcing the law, he ought to be better informed.”