LOS ANGELES (AP) – The county’s AIDS program director who worked for mayor-elect Antonio Villaraigosa’s campaign violated state law when he asked county employees and contractors to donate to the candidate, according to published reports.

Charles L. “Chuck” Henry solicited contributions from five county employees as well as from officials with at least five AIDS-treatment community groups while he ran the office that helps dole out lucrative county treatment contracts, according to a county Department of Health Service audit report obtained by the Los Angeles Times.

Henry, who ran Villaraigosa’s Westside campaign office, left his county job last month after seven years, but at the time the reason for his departure was unclear, the Times reported.

His actions violated a state law prohibiting local government employees from asking colleagues for campaign money and “created the appearance or concern of bias,” according to the confidential report.

Auditors recommended discipline for Henry and two other AIDS office employees they accused of lying during the fundraising probe.

Henry’s lawyer denied that his client had asked county employees for contributions and said his client’s fundraising requests to county contractors were proper.

“He did not attempt to strong-arm any vendors, nor did he put any unnecessary pressure on county employees to participate,” Winston Kevin McKesson told the Times. “All he did was exercise his First Amendment rights and he did it on his own time.”

The May 9 report offered no suggestion that the mayor-elect knew about Henry’s alleged wrongdoing.

Henry oversaw the county’s Office of AIDS Programs and Policy, an agency with an $82.5 million budget.

SANTA ROSA, Calif. (AP) – There was no Pride parade in Sonoma County because of a paperwork snafu.

The parade wasn’t held for the first time in 14 years because the committee that usually sponsors the event lost its non-profit status when it failed to turn in the correct paperwork.

The annual parade and festival would have been held June 5.

Instead, a newly formed group held a festival that Sunday at Julliard Park in Santa Rosa.

Adrienne Miller, president of the organizing committee for the old Pride Parade and Festival, said the group was notified last fall of the revocation of its non-profit status because it neglected to file the proper forms.

Last year, an estimated 2,000 people attended the downtown parade and the festival that followed at Santa Rosa Junior College.

Miller said her committee expects to resume operations in time for the 2006 parade.

“We view it as temporary setback,” she said. “We are still around and we will be back with bang next year with a parade and festival.”

ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla. (AP) – Forty-nine rainbow flags fluttered on the Bridge of Lions after a three-year battle by gay rights organizations.

U.S. District Judge Henry Lee Adams Jr. ruled last week against the city in a suit filed by the Rev. Ruth Jensen and Vicki Waldon of the St. Augustine Pride Committee, Equality Florida and the National Center for Lesbian Rights. The city rejected a request last month to fly the flags for a week of Pride events.

Adams said the organization would suffer “irreparable harm and loss if they are prohibited from flying their rainbow flags during the week of the annual gay pride celebration.” The Pride committee must pay permit fees of $295.

Jensen, who has been fighting for three years to fly the flags, was told by city officials that the bridge was reserved for groups of historical significance.

She said she was pleased with the ruling.

“It goes to affirm for us the importance of following through and not accepting a decision that we don’t believe is right,” she said.

In its most recent request to fly the flags, the Pride committee told city commissioners that the flags would commemorate the 1566 murder of a gay man in the St. Augustine area.

City Commissioner Errol Jones said the city did not plan to appeal the judge’s ruling.

WAILUKU, Hawaii (AP) – About 300 students at a Maui school have been shown a video encouraging tolerant behavior toward homosexuals.

Officials at King Kekaulike High School had planned to show the video to all ninth-, 10th- and 11th-graders. But they decided to require parental permission to see the video after some parents and residents objected.

Even though just 300 of the more than 1,000 eligible students saw the video, Principal Susan Scofield felt attendance was good, considering it was not required for a course.

Scofield said the intent was to foster tolerance and respect.

Several students who saw the film said it was promoting tolerance and not promoting homosexuality.

Central Maui complex superintendent Kenneth Nomura said the video was shown because there were cases of harassment. One gay student left the school after being beaten, and another says he does not plan to return for his senior year.

“If we look at it as being anti-harassment and pro-tolerance, then it’s not a controversial issue, but people are making it a controversial issue,” Nomura said.

AUGUSTA, Maine (AP) – A proposed constitutional amendment seeking to ban same-sex marriages in Maine is dead for the session following a Senate vote last week.

Supporters said the amendment would have bolstered Maine’s statute that defines marriage as between one man and one woman. But opponents saw no need to add the language to the state constitution.

The amendment would have needed a two-thirds vote of approval in the House and Senate in order to be sent on to voters. Last Tuesday, representatives denied the bill even a majority vote of approval as they rejected it 88-56.

MICHIGAN

HOWELL, Mich. (AP) – Three seniors who were suspended and barred from their high school’s graduation ceremony after they spray-pained “love” on sidewalks and benches around the school held their own commencement.

The seniors at Howell High School painted the word “love” more than 50 times around school property in early May to cover up an anti-gay message on a rock that students are allowed to decorate. They were suspended, as were two freshmen who wrote the original slur.

A handful of teachers and about 35 seniors still in their caps and gowns from the formal graduation earlier in the day also attended the alternate ceremony. Some of the school’s 533 graduates showed their support by carrying signs that said “love,” the Livingston County Daily Press and Argus reported.

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) – Nebraska’s attorney general has filed an appeal aimed at restoring the state’s broad ban on same-sex marriage.

Attorney General Jon Bruning’s appeal will be heard by the St. Louis-based 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. No date for arguments has been set.

A federal judge struck down the state constitutional amendment on May 13, saying the measure was too broad and deprived gays and lesbians of participation in the political process. The judge said the amendment interfered not only with the rights of same-sex couples but also with foster parents, adopted children and others.

Seventy percent of Nebraskans approved the amendment in 2000. While it specifically banned same-sex marriage, it went further than similar bans in many states by prohibiting same-sex couples from enjoying many of the legal protections that heterosexual couples enjoy. For example, gays and lesbians who work for the state were banned from sharing health insurance with their partners.

In the absence of the amendment, Nebraska has no law banning same-sex marriage on the books. But Bruning has said same-sex marriages were not allowed before the constitutional ban and would not be permitted now.

CINCINNATI (AP) – An Army sergeant from Ohio who was wounded in Iraq and wanted to remain in the military as an openly gay soldier was officially discharged, according to an advocacy group.

Sgt. Robert Stout, 23, was awarded the Purple Heart after a grenade sent shrapnel into his arm, face and legs while he was using a machine gun while on a Humvee in May 2004.

Stout, of Utica in central Ohio, told The Associated Press in April that he wanted to remain in the military and be openly gay, but that would conflict with the Pentagon’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy.

Aaron Belkin, director of the Center for the Study of Sexual Minorities in the Military at the University of California-Santa Barbara, said Stout told him he was due back in the United States on the day of his discharge.

“I know a ton of gay men that would be more than willing to stay in the Army if they could just be open,” Stout said in April.

Stout said he was openly gay among most of his 26-member platoon, part of the 9th Engineer Battalion based in Germany.

Army officials at the Pentagon could not immediately confirm the discharge. The Army declined to comment earlier on the case other than to say that soldiers discharged under “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” typically receive honorable discharges.

SCRANTON, Pa. (AP) – A suspended Roman Catholic clergy member has pleaded guilty to a felony count of attempted sexual abuse in New York, admitting to groping a former altar boy in a Greenwich Village hotel room during an overnight trip, the Manhattan district attorney’s office said.

The Rev. Albert M. Liberatore Jr., of Scranton, had already pleaded guilty in Luzerne County to sexually assaulting the same teenage boy over a three-year period.

Liberatore, 41, was charged last year after the victim, now 20, told police that he became involved with the priest when he was an eighth-grade altar boy at the Sacred Heart of Jesus Church in Duryea.

Investigators said the man described meeting Liberatore regularly for dinners, sleeping twice a week in his residence at the rectory and going with him on trips to New York, where he said Liberatore took him to gay bars and they had sexual contact at hotels.

Under a plea agreement with New York prosecutors executed May 26, Liberatore will get 10 years probation, be forbidden from school grounds and other places frequented by minors, and have to register as a sex offender. He is scheduled to be sentenced Aug. 10.

Liberatore pleaded guilty in Luzerne County Court last month to indecent assault, corruption of minors, furnishing alcohol to a minor and child endangerment. He was sentenced to five years probation.

The victim and his family have filed a federal lawsuit against Liberatore, former Scranton Bishop James C. Timlin and other diocesan entities.

The diocese has said it removed Liberatore from his priestly duties and from his job at the University of Scranton, where he was an instructor.

MILWAUKEE (AP) – The Greater Milwaukee Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America has passed a resolution recommending the denomination’s top legislative body permit ordination for gays and lesbians in committed relationships.

The resolution is one of up to 65 that are expected to be delivered to the church’s assembly, which in August will consider whether to bless same-sex unions and allow gays and lesbians to serve as pastors, associates in ministry, deaconesses and diaconal ministers.