LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) – An Arkansas judge declared unconstitutional a state ban on placing foster children in any household with a gay or lesbian member.

Ruling in a case brought by the Arkansas chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, Pulaski County Circuit Judge Timothy Fox said the state Child Welfare Agency Review board had overstepped its authority by trying to regulate “public morality.”

At issue was a 1999 board regulation that said gays and lesbians cannot become foster parents, and foster children cannot be placed in any home with a gay or lesbian member under its roof.

The ACLU had argued that the regulation violates the equal-protection rights of gays and lesbians. But the judge’s ruling did not turn on that argument.

While acknowledging that the ban was discriminatory against gays and lesbians, Fox said that gays and lesbians are not recognized under the law as a “suspect class,” as women and racial minorities are.

Instead, he said that the Arkansas Legislature gave the child-welfare board the power to “promote the health, safety and welfare of children,” and that the ban does not accomplish that. He said that the regulation instead seeks to regulate “public morality” – something the board was not given the authority to do.

INDEPENDENCE, Mo. (AP) – Independence police have charged a man in this Kansas City suburb with filing a false police report after he claimed someone tried to carve the word “fag” on his forehead.

There was one little problem with 22-year-old Floyd Elliot’s story: The superficial wound was backward, as if it were made while looking into a mirror.

Officials said that the slur also was burned into Elliot’s chest, but it was not backward. They say he filed the original report on Dec. 14 because he wanted more officers to patrol his Independence neighborhood.

PHILADELPHIA (AP) – A Methodist minister who was defrocked for declaring that she’s a lesbian living with her partner is taking her case to a church appeals court.

The Rev. Irene Elizabeth Stroud, of Philadelphia, was ousted Dec. 2 for violating the United Methodist Church’s law against “self-avowed practicing homosexuals” in the clergy.

She decided to appeal but delayed the announcement until after Christmas weekend.

Stroud said she hesitated to appeal because she’s tired and dislikes being in the spotlight, but “there are questions the larger church needs to discuss and wrestle with.”

She said one factor in her decision was something retired Bishop Joseph Yeakel, the judge who presided at her church trial, said to her after the verdict. Yeakel told Stroud “the day will come when the church apologizes for this decision.”

Stroud was tried by her own Eastern Pennsylvania Conference. The case now goes to an appeals panel of the Northeastern Jurisdiction, which covers 12 states and the District of Columbia.

At the trial, Yeakel barred testimony from six Stroud witnesses who oppose the Methodist ban, citing both legal and theological arguments. But the six filed material that is part of the trial record and the Northeastern Jurisdiction will review that.

Stroud wants the appeals panel to consider that Methodist law, known as the Book of Discipline, “calls us a church to stand against every form of discrimination” and “treat all people as equally loved by God.”

“When you look at those provisions of the Discipline and some of the prohibitions on homosexuality, you have to make a choice,” she said. The six witnesses’ filings made similar points.

If the Northeastern Jurisdiction decides trial procedures were mistaken, it could direct a second Pennsylvania trial, Yeakel said. It could also refer questions on interpretation of Methodist law to the church’s national Judicial Council.

The case originated last year when Stroud announced her same-sex partnership in a sermon. At the trial, an all-clergy jury voted 12-1 that she was guilty of violating Methodist law. In a subsequent penalty phase, jurors voted to defrock her by 7-6.

Stroud is one of three gay clergy members tried since the Methodist General Conference passed its gay ban in 1984. The Rev. Rose Mary Denman of New Hampshire was defrocked in 1987 and the Rev. Karen Dammann of Washington state was acquitted last March.

Philadelphia’s First United Methodist Church of Germantown has continued to employ Stroud as a lay worker.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) – The AIDS hotline went dead Dec. 31, a victim of less demand as people go elsewhere for information and advice about the disease.

The hotline provided information and advice for 18 years. Receivers got between 3,500 and 5,000 calls a year until the mid-1990s. It got about 500 in 2004.

Most of those who worked the hotline acknowledged it was no longer needed, because people are turning to other sources of information, such as the Internet.

“One of the very positive things about the hotline was that you had a human voice to talk to,” said Philip Kane, who answered calls from1986 until its closure. “You were certainly that listening ear. You weren’t able to fix things for them, but you could help them set up a plan and figure out what the next steps will be.”

At least 30 volunteers came once or twice a month to field calls 9:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. in the tiny office in the Department of Education. The phone line was made possible by a string of $48,000 federal grants. The state Health Department decided not to renew the grant.

“It’s been increasingly difficult to find people to answer the hotline. It doesn’t really ring,” said Christopher Butler, executive director of AIDS Project Rhode Island, which ran the hotline. “Whether the funding had gone away or not, we still would have made some changes to the hotline.”

Callers after Dec. 31 will reach a national AID hotline, run by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That number is (800) 342-AIDS.

Kane volunteered to field calls after a coworker at the hotel where he worked tested positive for HIV. He’s an outreach coordinator for an AIDS and HIV program at the Thundermist Health Center in Woonsocket.

“We were seeing people dying all the time,” Kane said. “It’s just so different today.”

MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) – The family of a pregnant woman who died while taking experimental AIDS drugs regimen to protect her baby from getting the disease has filed a lawsuit against the doctors, drug makers and hospitals involved in the study.

Joyce Ann Hafford’s mother and sister allege in the suit that doctors continued to give Hafford the drug regimen despite signs of liver failure. The suit also claims doctors didn’t warn the 33-year-old HIV-positive woman of the trial’s dangers. The family is seeking $10 million in damages in the lawsuit, filed in Shelby County Circuit Court.

“She trusted doctors to treat her, and they failed her,” said Rubbie King, Hafford’s sister.

Family members said they did not learn the National Institutes of Health had concluded the drug therapy likely caused Hafford’s death until The Associated Press obtained copies of the case file this month.

For the past year, family members believed Hafford died from AIDS complications.

NIH officials quickly suspected the drug regimen because it included nevirapine, an antiretroviral AIDS drug known to cause liver problems. Hafford’s death in August 2003, less than 72 hours after her son Sterling was born prematurely, halted the federal government research program of nevirapine.

Hafford learned she was HIV-positive when she became pregnant in spring 2003, and shortly after started the NIH-funded clinical trial of the drugs Combivir and nevirapine, also known as Viramune, hoping to block transmission to her son.

The baby was born HIV-negative.

Among the defendants named in the suit are several doctors and nurses who treated Hafford, the Regional Medical Center in Memphis where the drugs were administered and drug makers Smithkline Beecham Corp. and Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals.

Information about Hafford’s treatment reached the nation’s chief AIDS researcher, according to the documents obtained by AP.

“Ouch! Not much wwe [we] can do about dumd [dumb] docs,” Dr. Edmund Tramont, NIH’s AIDS Division chief, responded in an email after his staff reported that doctors continued to administer the drugs nevirapine and Combivir to Hafford despite signs of liver failure.

Officials in South Africa and Uganda are now questioning the safety of the drug, which has been used to treat thousands of pregnant women in Africa.

“In the past few weeks a ton of information has come out,” said William Winchester, the attorney for Hafford’s family.