STOCKTON, Calif. (AP) – The mother of a Linden High School student is fuming mad after the school’s 2004 yearbook appeared with the word “gay” plastered on her son’s picture.

Kathy Yray has filed a lawsuit claiming negligence and libel against the Linden Unified School District and a former teacher. Linden is about 15 miles east of Stockton.

The suit, filed in San Joaquin County Superior Court, accuses the school district and former yearbook adviser, Michelle Bryson, of being careless when they allowed the yearbook to go to print without a careful edit.

The word printed faintly on then-freshman Darrick Yray’s soccer photo in 250 copies of the yearbook made the boy vulnerable to “hatred, contempt and ridicule,” according to the lawsuit. The suit claims Yray suffered a loss of reputation, shame and hurt feelings.

The case is set for trial next year.

Yray filed a claim with the school district in November, seeking compensation. The school district rejected it, triggering the lawsuit.

Administrators scrambled to collect hundreds of the yearbooks from students days after it was handed out in May 2004. School officials even tore pages from the books.

Still, some remain in circulation, Assistant Superintendent Jane Steinkamp said.

“A whole lot of individuals didn’t feel the district had the right to take yearbooks,” Steinkamp said.

School officials would not comment on the lawsuit.

“We’ve made changes to how the yearbook is made to make sure nothing like that happens again,” District Superintendent Ron Estes said.

EVANSVILLE, Ind. (AP) – U.S. Rep. John Hostettler told a gathering of clergy that divorce is as dangerous to society as same-sex marriage and that churches are essential to strengthening families.

“The picture of marriage is the picture of Christian salvation,” Hostettler, R-Ind., said. “Any diminishing of that notion – whether homosexual marriage or any other degradation of marriage – is something we must fight in public policy.”

Hostettler, who spoke to an Indiana Family Institute program at Crossroads Christian Church in Evansville, also said religious faith needs to have a greater presence in public policy decisions.

Indiana does not track divorce rates, but the Indianapolis-based institute estimates that Vanderburgh County had among the most divorces in the state based on 2000 Census information.

An institute study found that 14 percent of Vanderburgh county residents over the age of 15 were divorced. Only two Indiana counties, Scott and Marion, ranked above Vanderburgh, the study found.

Hostettler, who is from Wadesville, has won a string of generally close elections in southwestern Indiana’s Eighth District since he first won his seat in 1994 with strong support from religious conservatives.

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) – The retrial of two Greenacres men previously convicted of beating to death a gay waiter abruptly ended when both accepted plea agreements.

Bryan Donahue, 23, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder motivated by hatred and was sentenced to 30 years in prison.

William Dodge, 24, was sentenced to 16 years in prison after he pleaded guilty to third-degree murder motivated by hatred.

Both men got credit for more than seven years they have already spent in custody, the Palm Beach Post reported.

Donahue and Dodge both also apologized to the family of 29-year-old Steven Goedereis, who was beaten to death in April 1998.

Defense attorney Bert Winkler told jurors that Goedereis had made a flirtatious comment to Donahue.

Both defendants denied they attacked Goedereis because he was gay. But prosecutors said the 118-pound waiter was “intentionally selected because of his sexual orientation.”

Goedereis died two days after the attack.

In 1999 Donahue was convicted of second-degree murder and robbery and sentenced to 50 years in prison. A separate jury convicted Dodge of third-degree murder; he was sentenced to 25 years in prison.

An appeals court reversed both convictions, ruling that defense attorneys should have been allowed to have a medical expert testify that paramedics could have contributed to Goedereis’ death by not properly inserting his breathing tube.

BOSTON (AP) – State legislators voted to hold a Constitutional Convention Sept. 14 to debate a proposed amendment that would replace same-sex marriage in Massachusetts with Vermont-style civil unions.

Members of the House and Senate have already given initial approval to the amendment, but the state constitution requires them to approve identical language in two successive sessions before the amendment can be put before state voters.

The Supreme Judicial Court legalized same-sex marriage in Massachusetts in 2003, making it the only state where such unions are legal. Opponents then backed a constitutional amendment that would outlaw same-sex marriage but permit civil unions. Civil unions would provide same-sex partners the same legal benefits without the status of marriage.

Legislative approval of the amendment has been thrown into doubt after some supporters in the initial vote announced they had changed their mind. The most recent is Rep. Anthony Petruccelli, a Democrat, who was quoted as saying he will not vote for the proposal despite supporting it last year.

Petruccelli told Bay Windows, which features gay news, that legalized same-sex marriage has “made strong unions among people who have not had the opportunity until that time to get married.”

In June, the Massachusetts Family Institute submitted a citizen’s initiative petition that would amend the constitution to define marriage as between a man and a woman.

Gov. Mitt Romney withdrew his initial support for a compromise, and is backing the initiative petition. He said the compromise “muddied” the issue of same-sex marriage by legalizing civil unions.

The initiative is now being reviewed, along with all other proposed 2006 ballot questions, by Attorney General Tom Reilly. If it is approved, proponents would have to gather about 66,000 certified signatures to get it on the ballot.

ALBANY, New York (AP) – Edward Cox, the son-in-law of the late President Richard M. Nixon, announced endorsements from two Republican Party county chairs in his bid for the 2006 Senate nomination to challenge Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s re-election.

Cox is trying to blunt the drive by Westchester County District Attorney Jeanine Pirro for the Republican Party nomination.

Pirro, who announced her candidacy Aug. 8, had been urged to enter the Senate race by 46 of the state’s 62 county chairs.

Cox said Pirro, who has supported abortion and gay rights, is too liberal to win needed Conservative Party backing. No Republican running statewide has won in New York since 1974 without the Conservative Party endorsement.

“In my judgment, Ed has the ideas, values and ability to mount the most aggressive challenge to Sen. Clinton,” said Lowell Conrad, chair of the Republican Party in Livingston County, New York, in a statement distributed by the Cox campaign.

“We are part of a political party that has a strong ideology. I have come to learn that Ed Cox firmly believes in that ideology,” added Dan Olson, Republican Party chair of Wayne County, New York.

“Jeanine’s support is wide and deep, and we look forward to defeating Hillary in November 2006,” said Pirro campaign spokesperson Michael McKeon when asked about the Cox endorsements.

Also eyeing the 2006 Republican Party Senate nomination are former Yonkers, New York, Mayor John Spencer and tax attorney William Brenner of Sullivan County, New York.

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) – A state court ruled that Allentown can have an ordinance protecting residents from discrimination in housing or employment matters because of their gender identity or sexual orientation.

The city’s powers under its 1996 home-rule charter empowered it to police discrimination, a three-judge Commonwealth Court panel said in reversing a Lehigh County judge. The county judge had sided in June 2004 with four landlords who had challenged the law.

Commonwealth Court Judge Renee Cohn Jubelirer said home-rule law restrictions on regulating business did not prevent the city from adopting the ordinance against gay bias, as the county judge had ruled. The ordinance had remained in place while the appeal was pending.

Home-rule charters generally give cities greater power to govern themselves. Jubelirer noted the irony that in the case of anti-discrimination ordinances, a small city without home rule would have automatically withstood the landlords’ legal attack.

“Had Allentown not adopted home rule, which is designed to give a municipality broad powers, the trial court would have upheld the city’s authority to enact this ordinance,” she wrote.

The decision relied heavily on a December ruling by the state Supreme Court that allowed Philadelphia to extend worker benefits to same-sex “life partners” of city employees.

Randall L. Wenger, the lawyer for Allentown landlords Gerry Hartman, John Lapinski, Robert Roycroft and Debbie Roycroft, said they had not decided whether to appeal further. He said Jubelirer’s opinion employed “an outcome-based rationale.”

“I think it’s difficult for the judiciary to closely follow legal precedent and closely follow statutes if it means they have to make a decision that would appear that they don’t respect homosexuals as a group,” Wenger said.

The landlords opposed the ordinance because of their Christian moral beliefs about homosexuality, he said.

Dan Anders, who represented the city, said the Philadelphia case established that cities, under their police powers, are allowed to have ordinances that fight the effects of discrimination.

Home-rule restrictions on business regulation only limit how businesses can be forced to take certain actions, he said, whereas the anti-bias ordinance was a prohibition on certain behavior.

“It’s not a duty or an obligation put upon employers, it’s a protection for the citizens of the city,” he said.

JANESVILLE, Wis. (AP) – A 26-year-old man who claims he was sexually abused by a priest when he was an altar boy concocted the story to explain to his parents why he was gay, the accused priest’s attorney argued.

Attorney Patrick McDonald urged Rock County jurors to award compensatory and punitive damages to the Rev. Gerald Vosen for what McDonald said were the false accusations made by the man.

McDonald said the Milwaukee man made up the story about being abused in fifth and sixth grade at St. John Vianney School in Janesville to justify his sexual orientation to his parents.

“That’s why he made up this lie,” McDonald said in his closing arguments. “Little did he suspect this was going to mushroom and have a devastating effect on so many lives.”

McDonald said the man’s parents quickly reported the allegations against Vosen to the Madison Diocese, and the man was forced to stand by what he had said.

But the man’s attorney, John Casey, said the man’s sexual orientation had nothing to do with his accusations.

“A homosexual with an agenda is one of the ugliest clichés, rejected outright,” he told jurors.

Casey acknowledged the man’s testimony contained inconsistencies but said they were the result of trying to remember abuse that happened 15 years ago. He urged jurors to “take a stand. Say it is not alright to abuse children.”

Vosen is seeking damages for humiliation, mental anguish and damage to his reputation in a defamation lawsuit against the man.

Jurors will be asked to decide whether the allegations are false and, if so, how much in damages Vosen should receive. Vosen is on administrative leave from his job as pastor of St. Joseph Parish in Baraboo.

A cloud of suspicion has surrounded Vosen since a woman at a hearing on a clergy sex abuse bill at the state Capitol two years ago said the priest had abused her brother during the 1970s. The diocese suspended Vosen, even though the woman’s brother denied he ever was abused, and launched an investigation.

Bishop Robert Morlino placed Vosen on administrative leave in February 2004, saying the investigation confirmed at least one of three victims’ allegations was credible.

WAUSAU, Wis. (AP) – For the second time in three years, a teenager claims a food-related business discriminated against her because she’s HIV-positive.

Korrin Krause, 19, claims a Schofield restaurant violated the Americans with Disabilities Act by ignoring her application for a waitress job early last year because she was infected with the virus that causes AIDS, according to a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Madison.

“She applied for a job she is qualified for,” said Robert Tomlinson, an attorney for the U.S. Equal Opportunity Commission’s Milwaukee office, which filed the lawsuit on Krause’s behalf. “It appears the only reason she wasn’t hired was because of her HIV status.”

An attorney for the Log Cabin Restaurant, Cari Westerhof, was unavailable for comment. The owner of the restaurant, Keith Kappel, said he bought the business last December, and the job dispute involves previous owner Dean Lee, who did not immediately return a telephone message left at his home.

According to Tomlinson, Krause applied for a waitress job at the restaurant in February 2004 after seeing an advertisement for an opening.

When she had not heard any word on the job, she went to the restaurant to update her application and saw the words “HIV positive” written on it, Tomlinson said.

“What is unusual is that they would be so blatant as to write her HIV status across the application,” the attorney said. “It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out there is something amiss.”

The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages for Krause, who lives in the Wausau area.

In 2002, Krause received $90,000 to settle a similar lawsuit the EEOC filed against Quality Foods IGA, also of Schofield. Krause claimed she worked only one day at the grocery store before the manager fired her after calling her family to verify the girl, then 16, had the HIV virus.

Krause was born with the virus. Her biological mother died in 1994. Medical experts say people cannot transmit HIV by handling groceries.