Oscar-winning director John Schlesinger, the provocative filmmaker who brought gay characters into mainstream cinema with Midnight Cowboy, and shocked audiences with an unflinching look at torture in Marathon Man, has died. He was 77.

The British-born, openly gay filmmaker had a debilitating stroke in December 2000, and his condition had deteriorated significantly in recent weeks. He was taken off life support July 24 and died July 25 at Desert Regional Medical Center in Palm Springs.

Schlesinger broke ground in 1969 with his first American film, Midnight Cowboy. It starred Jon Voight as a naive Texan who turns to prostitution to survive in New York.

Voight called Schlesinger a “true genius” who took risks without worrying about the outcome.

Schlesinger’s last film was The Next Best Thing, which starred Rupert Everett and Madonna.

A jury in Los Angeles awarded nearly $2 million to a juvenile detention center cook who maintains he suffered years of discrimination and verbal harassment on the job because he is gay.

Bruce Hope, 41, sued the state in 2001, alleging that he was denied a promotion and pressured to quit because of his sexual orientation. Hope also said fellow employees at the Fred C. Nelles Youth Correctional Facility in Whittier repeatedly called him derogatory names, and that he was forced to go on medical leave after four years due to the stress.

Hope, who is HIV-positive and partially blind, stated in the lawsuit that he told his supervisors about his medical condition after working at the center for one year.

“During the next three years, he was subjected to verbal taunts from the staff and wards, including workers telling people that Hope might be spreading AIDS by touching knives in the kitchen,” according to the suit.

The jury awarded Hope $1.97 million in a unanimous verdict in Los Angeles County Superior Court.

Hispanics comprise 13 percent of the U.S. population, but account for 20 percent of those living with AIDS, according to a study based on data from local and state health departments.

“What we have addressed here is that Latinos do not test,” said Alberto Santana, a spokesperson for the National Alliance of State and Territorial AIDS Directors. “You have people who walk into an emergency room with symptoms and that is how they learn they have HIV.”

The study was released in Washington, D.C.

“You have to tailor it to the cultural characteristics and the idiosyncrasies of that particular community, be it Mexicans, Puerto Ricans or Dominicans,” said Santana.

An example: The Spanish word “vato” means homeboy to a Mexican audience. But used in a radio or television ad, it could be confused with “pato,” or duck, which is slang for gay among Puerto Ricans and Dominicans.

Transmission rates are highest among men, who comprise 80 percent of Hispanic AIDS cases.

Among the study’s recommendations is a call to health-care officials to provide AIDS treatment and HIV testing to Hispanics living in the United States — regardless of their immigration status.

At least two major U.S. newspapers have published the announcements of same-sex couples married in Canada — a move applauded by gay rights advocates and criticized by opponents.

The Washington Post ran the marriage announcement of two women from the suburb of Takoma Park, Maryland, in a July 23 edition of its “Engagements, Weddings and Anniversaries” section.

On July 28, The Times-Picayune of New Orleans published the marriage notice of two local men on the paper’s “Weddings & Engagements” page.

Both couples went to Toronto in the last few weeks to take their vows.

Recent court rulings in Canada have declared the government’s definition of marriage as unconstitutional because it specified it as the union of a man and a woman — paving the way for gays and lesbians to obtain legal marriages.

The two nuptial notices in the papers last week are thought to be among the first such announcements of legal gay marriages.

The manager of KTVB-TV in Boise, Idaho, says business, not content, dictated a decision to shelve a new reality program matching aesthetically inept straight men with fashion-conscious gay men for a head-to-toe make over.

Station manager Doug Armstrong said the NBC affiliate replaced “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” with an episode of a game show hosted by Donnie Osmond because the new reality show originally aired on cable channel Bravo.

“KTVB has a policy against using our own on-air time to promote a competing station,” Armstrong said.

He rejected claims from gay advocates that the program was not aired because of its content. He said the episode of “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” would have been fully acceptable if some minor, adult language was changed.

At least two transsexual women have accused the chair of the psychology department at Chicago’s Northwestern University of using them as research subjects without consent in a controversial new book on transsexualism.

The women say Professor J. Michael Bailey engaged in research misconduct, and they further contend the book makes them out to be perverted freaks.

The book, The Man Who Would Be Queen: The Science of Gender-Bending and Transsexualism, is “a slam, a major derogatory exposé of transsexuals,” said Anjelica Kieltyka, 52, who filed a complaint with Northwestern earlier this month.

Bailey mentions Kieltyka by name in the book as having introduced him to transsexuals in Chicago. Kieltyka said Bailey also uses pseudonyms in referring to her and several acquaintances in discussing theories that depict some transsexuals as having a mental illness involving sexual fetishes.

University of Pennsylvania bioethicist Art Caplan said the complaints are groundless if the women simply disagree with his theories, since Bailey is protected by free speech.

But the women allege that the book was a research project and that they were never asked to consent to participate — claims that, if true, could violate university ethics guidelines.

Bailey says the most criticized part of his book involves another researcher’s theory that male-to-female transsexuals include some men who are not gay but become sexually aroused “at the idea of being a woman.”

The governing board of the Virginia Housing Development Authority voted unanimously to abolish its rule denying low-interest home mortgage loans to unmarried couples.

VHDA was the only state housing finance agency in the country that limited loans to joint applicants “related by blood, marriage or adoption or by legal custodial relationship.”

Supporters said changing the rule will allow more people to buy houses by pooling their financial resources. They said it will make that option available to more single parents, gay couples, the disabled and the elderly — groups that have low rates of home ownership.

Opponents had objected to allowing gay couples to obtain loans from VHDA.

VHDA said it moved to eliminate the ban because of changes in household composition, the availability of additional funding to write more loans and the flow of additional revenue that would be generated by the additional loans written.

Dyana Mason, executive director of Equality Virginia, said “by eliminating this discriminatory rule, hundreds, if not thousands, of low-income Virginians, gay and straight, black and white, can now move into the home of their dreams.”