GUNTERSVILLE, Ala. (AP) – Marshall County Sheriff Mac Holcomb is a no-nonsense law officer who remembers the 1940s and 1950s as a better time than now. He spells his views out on a website for all to see.

Don Hunter, an Anniston native who is now a deputy administrator for Marin County, Calif., ran across it and didn’t like what he saw – a law officer publicly condemning homosexuality as “an abomination.”

The sheriff, reflecting on growing up in the 1940s and 1950s, says on the website: “Men were men and women were women and there was no mistaking which was which … Homosexuality was very queer and a despicable act … an abomination.”

“It is shocking,” said Hunter, who is gay and who wrote the sheriff a letter. “He seems to have a very warped sense of the good old days.”

Holcomb told The Birmingham News that the Bible condemns homosexuality. He said his political message has been posted in his office since 1995 and he won’t disavow it now that it’s on the Internet with global reach.

“I campaigned on family values and that is where I stand,” he said.

“While I would agree with you that we have lost many wonderful things from the 1950s,” Hunter wrote to the sheriff, “homophobia, racism, and sexism are not part of the wonderful things. They are ugly now, they were ugly then, and surely they would be ugly in the eyes of Jesus Christ, who taught only love and compassion, never hatred.”

Marshall County Commission Chair Billy Cannon said the county pays for the website but has no authority over the sheriff and would probably need a court order to make him remove his message.

He said he regrets that the sheriff posted the comments about homosexuality and feels the sheriff “needs to step down from his soap box just a little bit.”

ATLANTA (AP) – President Bush exploited religious feelings against same-sex marriage in his re-election campaign, former presidential candidate Al Sharpton said.

Speaking at Atlanta’s Butler Street Christian Methodist Episcopal, Sharpton said Bush used the same-sex marriage debate to draw attention away from the Iraq war and ignored domestic problems.

“I think George Bush manipulated a lot of religious feelings about marriage when the president has little or nothing to do with marriage,” Sharpton said.

The 2004 election was not the place for a moral debate, the New York Democrat said.

“It was the place for a debate on Iraq, he’s in charge of the military; healthcare, he’s in charge of that; on Social Security, he’s in charge of that,” Sharpton said. “But we should not relinquish the morality of the church to the office of president. He has nothing to do with that.”

Sharpton lost the Democratic presidential nomination to Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry but said he remains committed to electing Democrats. But Sharpton, who just ended a two-day meeting in Atlanta with black members of the Democratic National Committee, warned that party leaders should not ignore blacks when choosing future leaders.

Sharpton, who spoke to the Southern Black Caucus, said he believes black people may drift further from the Democrats unless leaders reward black party members with key posts.

LILBURN, Ga. (AP) – Berkmar High School students opened the school newspaper to a blank editorial page after the school’s principal ordered the staff to yank two opinion pieces about a new club for straight and gay teens.

Gwinnett County school officials said Principal Kendall Johnson told the staff to remove the editorials because he felt it would disturb students during exam time.

“Mr. Johnson was not going to allow there to be distractions from what they are about teaching and learning,” Gwinnett Schools spokesperson Sloan Roach said. “The point/counterpoint was inflammatory in nature and could be disruptive.”

The columns were slated for the December issue of the newspaper, the Liberty. The editorials debated whether a student club – the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Society – should meet on school grounds.

Liberty editor L’Anita Weiler, 18, said, “I had a feeling it was going to be censored.”

Weiler and student copy editor Kelly Shaul, 17, distributed copies of the editorials to Berkmar students after the paper was published. The pair also provided copies of the editorials to the media.

“We wanted to run a censored stamp on the page. But Mr. Johnson censored our ‘censored’ stamp, which is pointless,” Shaul said.

The newspaper also wrote a news article about the formation of the club, which was edited by school administrators, Weiler said.

In 1998, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier that principals are allowed to censor school publications, but First Amendment advocates argue that students should be able to exercise free speech.

“The point is their prediction of disruption has to be based on reasonable facts,” said Mark Goodman, executive director of the Student Press Law Center in Arlington, Va. “What the censorship can’t be based on is the inclination to silence a particular viewpoint they disagree with or think would be unpopular.”

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. (AP) – County Executive Andrew Spano said that New York Medical College violated Westchester’s anti-discrimination policy when it refused to sanction a gay student group.

He also announced that county Health Commissioner Joshua Lipsman, former executive director of the Gay Men’s Health Crisis, had resigned his teaching positions with the college to protest the decision.

“Students, whether gay or straight, should have a forum to discuss issues that affect them and that will help them improve the delivery of healthcare services to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender patients,” Spano said.

The college in Valhalla, which is affiliated with the Archdiocese of New York, refused permission last spring for an organization called Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender People in Medicine, which said it would advocate for better healthcare for GLBT people.

Donna Moriarty, a spokesperson for the college, said Dr. Ralph O’Connell, provost and dean of the college, was not available to comment on Spano’s or Lipsman’s actions.

O’Connell said in a statement that approval for the GLBT organization was denied because, “It was clear that the organization and its leader would advocate and promote activities inconsistent with the values of NYMC.” He said the college does not discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation and its curriculum “thoroughly covers GLBT-related health issues.”

Spano said the county Human Rights Commission was investigating the college’s decision and would report on options for further action. He said he hoped the college would change its decision.

WASHINGTON (AP) – The District of Columbia has launched a new program to give more city residents with AIDS access to medication.

The program is for D.C. residents who are HIV positive but do not qualify for traditional Medicaid, said Dr. Gregg Payne, the city’s health director.

People in that category with income below the federal poverty level can get anti-retroviral medications from pharmacies participating in the program.

The city expects to enroll more than 260 residents in the first year, Payne said. Officials with the program will attend several community meetings to further describe it.

RICHMOND, Virginia (AP) – The Virginia Supreme Court struck down an archaic and rarely enforced state law prohibiting sex between unmarried people.

The unanimous ruling strongly suggests that a separate anti-sodomy law in Virginia also is unconstitutional, although that statute is not directly affected. The justices based their ruling on a U.S. Supreme Court decision voiding an anti-sodomy law in Texas.

“This case directly affects only the fornication law but makes it absolutely clear how the court would rule were the sodomy law before it,” said Kent Willis, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union in Virginia.

Virginia’s anti-sodomy law prohibits oral and anal sex even for married couples, but gay-rights advocates say the statute is only used to target gay people.

“It’s a strong message to legislators that they must repeal Virginia’s sodomy law,” Willis said. “Now both the U.S. Supreme Court and the Virginia Supreme Court have spoken on essentially the same issue.”