GUNTERSVILLE, Ala. (AP) – Marshall County Sheriff Mac Holcomb has removed his personal letter from a county-sponsored website in which he condemns homosexuality as “an abomination.”

Holcomb, who had received a complaint from an Alabama native now living in California, said he is sticking to his beliefs and removed the letter for the overall good of the county. The letter was moved to his personal website.

“This will prevent the county from having to spend money unnecessarily in defending a frivolous lawsuit and… this action will make it clear that the views expressed are my personal views and do not represent official policy of the county or the sheriff’s department,” Holcomb said in a statement.

The 61-year-old sheriff, in the letter on the website, remembered the 1940s and 1950s fondly. “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,” he wrote.

Holcomb’s action comes after Anniston native Don Hunter, who is now a deputy administrator for Marin County, Calif., complained to the sheriff in a letter last month. Hunter said he came across Holcomb’s words while searching the county website for elderly assistance for his mother in Alabama.

“It was shocking to me because it was so hateful,” said Hunter, adding that he never received a response from Holcomb.

Hunter said that he too grew up in the 1950s. “I remember the good things from that time, but bad things too. There was racism and mistreatment of homosexuals,” he said.

In recent weeks, Hunter said he has received hate mail and phone calls about his stance against the sheriff. He said he felt discouraged about his move against the sheriff until hearing the news that the sheriff had removed the statement from the county website.

ROCHESTER, N.H. (AP) – The Episcopal Church of the Redeemer, which lost members after the diocese elected an openly gay bishop, plans to close in the spring.

Parishioners met with Bishop Gene Robinson to make the closing official. The church has operated for more than 100 years.

“Perhaps it was time to rest,” Robinson said.

Parishioners made the decision, he added, with “much disappointment and sadness.”

The church will remain open until April. Its final service is set for Easter Sunday.

A group of 36 parishioners decided in June they couldn’t stay in the church after Robinson refused to grant complete pastoral supervision to a more orthodox bishop. Since then, only 12 to 14 parishioners have attended weekly Sunday service.

Parishioners voted 24-1 at an annual meeting to approve the closure. The sole dissenter voted no “because he finally found a church he loved and didn’t have anywhere else to go,” Robinson said.

Kevin Gorham, a parishioner for 18 years who helps run the church, said its congregation was too small even before the split over Robinson.

“It was an event that made us face the facts, but the facts have been here,” he said.

The diocese has given the church about $200,000 in support over roughly the last decade, officials said. Formally, the church is classified as a mission, which permits the support.

The church had survived a similar conflict in 1988. More than 100 parishioners left as the church’s rector installed female clergy and replaced the 1928 Book of Common Prayer with the 1979 version, as national Episcopal Church policy demanded. The splinter group became the Trinity Anglican Church, eventually building a new church.

The building’s fate after April hasn’t been decided, Robinson said. He predicted the church someday will rise again in a new form.

“God will reveal the new shape of ministry here,” he said.

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) – A transgender Oklahoma City police officer has filed a civil rights complaint accusing the police department of trying to force her to quit.

Officer Paula Schonauer filed the complaint Jan. 14 with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Police Chief Bill Citty was unaware of Schonauer’s latest complaint, said Sgt. Charles Phillips, assistant public information officer.

“The chief’s comment is that he has not been notified of the complaint at this point, and he wants to reiterate that Officer Schonauer is still an active employee of the Oklahoma City Police Department, and the department will respond as required to any complaints as we receive them,” Phillips said.

Schonauer first filed a complaint with the EEOC in March, accusing the department of creating a hostile work environment for her. She filed a second EEOC complaint in May, alleging she suffered retaliation for filing the first complaint.

VICTORVILLE, Calif. (AP) – Eighteen high school students staged mock same-sex weddings on campus in ceremonies that drew about 50 protesters, including a parent of one of the participants.

The lunchtime “marriages” were organized to mark National Freedom to Marry Day on Feb. 12, and became the latest focal point for controversy at Silverado High School, which has been roiled by fighting between black and Hispanic students.

Participants said they didn’t expect so much attention from the mock marriages between six female couples and three male couples.

“When we planned it, it wasn’t like, ‘Let’s make this big political statement.’ It was just ‘Let’s do this cute little ceremony,’ and that’s about it,” said Ceslie Garza, 16, one of the “brides.”

Protesters outside the school huddled under umbrellas in heavy rain, many holding signs reading “I Do Not”.

“What I object to is the fact that they’re doing it on a school campus,” said protester Amy Drake, 32. “You’re injecting emotions into the students that don’t need to be dealt with.”

Jerry Martin, 16, said he was “scared out of my mind” before taking to a stage for the demonstration, adding that he had been threatened with violence before it. He said “it kind of hurt” that his mother took part in the protest.

School officials said they would not interfere with students’ right to free speech. Mock heterosexual marriages have been performed at the campus as part of class activities.

“It’s a student activity,” said Greg Lundeen, superintendent of the Victor Valley high school district. “We’re staying out of it.”

Victorville is located about 70 miles northeast of downtown Los Angeles.

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (AP) – A police officer has resigned after 100 photos of barely clad men were found in his home.

An investigation of former patrol person Charles Broshous was begun after a gay dancer reported being arrested and forced to strip to a “satin leopard G-string” while Broshous photographed him.

Broshous, 36, pleaded guilty to misdemeanor official misconduct Nov. 24 and resigned from the force that day. His departure was disclosed under a freedom of information request by The Gazette.

During the police department’s three-month internal affairs investigation, it was discovered that Broshous had photographed and collected pictures of men who were about the same age, 18 to 24, according to police reports.

“Pictures that are this consistent in nature generally indicate a person’s preference for their sexual desires and needs,” wrote Derek Graham, a homicide detective who was lead investigator on the Broshous case.

“The fact that photographs would be taken of suspects, all of whom were of the same age group and athletic build with their shirts off, indicated that Officer Broshous was intentionally contacting individuals sharing these characteristics in order to photograph them.”

Broshous refused to be interviewed.

Through Colorado Open Records Act requests, The Gazette obtained hundreds of pages of internal investigation documents and Broshous’ personnel files from Colorado Springs police and the Colorado State Patrol, where he served nine years.

Those documents, coupled with interviews of people who complained about Broshous, paint a picture of an officer who abused his authority.

Investigators said that, among other things, Broshous issued an unusually high number of tickets for underage drinking. He would order offenders to remove their shirts, saying he was looking for tattoos.

NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. (AP) – The New Brunswick Theological Seminary has ousted its president and reprimanded him for officiating at his gay daughter’s wedding.

The school’s board of trustees said the Rev. Norman Kansfield, 64, performed the ceremony in Massachusetts.

“We decided that the president had put the seminary in an awkward position by performing that ceremony without giving us the benefit of offering sufficient counsel,” the Rev. Larry Williams Sr., a member speaking on the board’s behalf, told The Star-Ledger of Newark. “It could have hurt the school if it divided people in our student body, if it divided our faculty, if it divided other people who support us.”

In a letter sent shortly before the June 19 wedding of his daughter, Anne, Kansfield informed the board of his decision to officiate, and said he wasn’t seeking its permission. The board voted Jan. 28 not to renew Kansfield’s contract.

Kansfield said he had not done anything to hurt his denomination, the Reformed Church of America.

“People presume I have been on a crusade,” he said. “In point of fact, I’m a conservative theologian. I would not do anything that goes against the church.”

The Reformed Church’s roots date to Dutch settlers who arrived in America 400 years ago. It is one of the more conservative denominations in the National Council of Churches.

Unlike its fellow mainline Protestant churches – such as Episcopalians and Methodists – the church has not had high-profile controversies over gay rights.

But the denomination’s national office in Grand Rapids, Mich., said formal complaints have been filed against Kansfield, who expects to be brought up on charges in June at the church’s General Synod in Schenectady, N.Y.

A New Jersey gay rights group blasted the action as “sickening and completely out of step” with the attitudes of many New Jerseyans.

“In New Jersey, the state that doesn’t hate, talk about a decision made with a tin ear and a heavy hand,” said Steven Goldstein, chair of Garden State Equality.

Kansfield, who said he has had close gay friends since high school and his early days as a minister in Queens, said he sought permission from Massachusetts authorities last summer before he performed the ceremony.

He said a trial would be the highest-profile proceeding in the church since 1962, when a seminary professor questioned whether the first parts of Genesis should be taken literally.

Kansfield said he really wanted to perform his daughter’s wedding ceremony. Anne and her partner, Jennifer Aull, agreed. The couple lives in New York City.

“Some people support what he did, some people don’t,” said Dave Haase, a second-year master’s of divinity student. “Some people are on the fence.”

Haase said he thought the board reacted out of “fear” of the broader controversy that Kansfield’s actions might create.

“We know very well that fear is the opposite of faith,” he said. “They were worried about how conservatives would react. Unfortunately, church government tends to get very defensive when [it] feels threatened.”

CLEVELAND (AP) – A judge said he won’t decide whether Ohio’s recently enacted constitutional amendment defining marriage makes the state’s 25-year-old domestic violence law unconstitutional.

Darnell Forte, a Cleveland man accused of slapping his live-in girlfriend, had asked the judge to throw out a domestic violence charge, saying such a charge should be reserved for married couples under the amendment banning same-sex marriage and civil unions.

Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge Stuart Friedman denied Forte’s request on procedural grounds, pointing out that his court is usually not the place where constitutional issues are decided. He said the domestic violence charge was filed in August, before Ohio’s marriage amendment was passed in November.

The marriage amendment denies legal status to same-sex or opposite-sex unmarried couples.

Friedman’s ruling on the motion was widely anticipated as a possible precedent for similar cases, including at least 11 similar motions in the Cleveland area.

Seventeen states have constitutional language defining marriage as between a man and a woman.

TIVERTON, R.I. (AP) – The town’s school committee voted to grant healthcare benefits to a gay couple from Massachusetts, but Rhode Island officials continue to puzzle out what the Bay State’s decision to permit same-sex marriage means here.

Cheryl McCullough, a health teacher and guidance counselor who retired from Tiverton schools in 1997, and Joyce Boivin were married in June in Massachusetts after that state allowed same-sex marriages. A few days later, McCullough asked that her benefits be extended to Boivin. The women live in Swansea, Mass.

Rhode Island law is silent on same-sex marriage, but Attorney General Patrick Lynch has indicated the state would honor such unions performed elsewhere unless they were contrary to the “strong public policy” of the state.

Tiverton school officials initially asked a Superior Court for an opinion on how to proceed. They said they would drop that request because of Lynch’s advisory opinion in October that two retired Portsmouth teachers now living in Massachusetts can seek survivor’s benefits for their same-sex spouses.

A spokesperson for Lynch said the attorney general’s office does not have a blanket answer for inquiries about how same-sex couples married in Massachusetts fare under Rhode Island law. Spokesperson Mike Healey said Lynch would only respond on a case-by-case basis because there is no clear statement of public policy from the courts or the Legislature.

“Those issues are where the rubber meets the road. Because Attorney General Lynch is not a policy-maker,” Healey said. “We have to be and will continue to be very careful about answering the specific questions that are posed to us on this issue.”

While Tiverton officials used the attorney general’s opinion in the Portsmouth case to support their decision, a lawyer who helped McCullough and Boivin said their situation was a straightforward contract issue.

Gary Buseck, legal director at Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders in Boston, said the district’s health care contract provides for coverage for employees and retirees’ spouses if they are legally married within the states in which they live.

The Tiverton decision “doesn’t specifically have implications beyond this teacher and her spouse” and other teachers with similar contracts, Buseck said.

In the Portsmouth case, the state treasurer’s office had asked Lynch for guidance about two former Portsmouth teachers who wanted to apply for survivor benefits for their same-sex spouses. Lynch said the benefits could be extended to the couples, who live in Massachusetts.

“The attorney general sent a pretty clear message that same-sex marriages of other states are not barred by public policy in Rhode Island,” said Stephen Robinson, lawyer for the Tiverton School Department.

The state treasurer’s office said the Portsmouth cases are the only they have been asked to address since Massachusetts legalized same-sex marriage. In one case, the survivor benefits were granted. They were denied in the other due to eligibility issues unrelated to the woman’s marriage.