PASO ROBLES, Calif. (AP) – Tolerance of gays and lesbians is gaining momentum at Paso Robles High School.

The school club Gay-Straight Alliance, formed to create allies by uniting gay and straight students, has been gaining acceptance this year under the leadership of its president Michael Landrum, an openly gay 15-year-old student.

Teachers said the Gay-Straight Alliance club struggled to keep going in recent years, until Landrum showed up. The club – which has 12 members, three of them openly gay – is now thriving.

“They’re driven, they’re dedicated and they’re having a good time,” teacher and club adviser Joshua Gwiazda said.

“We just want people to know everyone deserves to be treated with respect,” Landrum said. “It’s really good because you can talk to people who are going through the exact same things you are.”

Two of the club’s three speaking events this year attracted more than 150 students. And students planned a trip to Sacramento for Queer Youth Advocacy Day to gather with other California teens.

SANTA ANA, Calif. (AP) – Federal officials have demanded Orange County return nearly $150,000 in misspent AIDS funds.

Orange County health officials have been in negotiations for a year with the federal Health Resources and Services Administration over a two-year grant given pastor Aubrey Keys and his New Millennium Community Coalition.

New Millennium, a county-funded service contracted to do AIDS outreach in the black community, did not keep adequate records of clients’ race or HIV status, federal officials said.

County officials were under a federal mandate to use minority-run organizations to help minorities, but the county was unable to tell if New Millennium helped anyone.

Federal officials said county health care managers did such a poor job overseeing New Millennium that the county should pay back $143,328.

County Executive Officer Tom Mauk conceded “there were problems” with New Millennium but he called the health care agency “the best, if not one of the best, run departments in the county.”

While county officials admit some general problems in overseeing the grant, they mainly blame a federal mandate in 2000 that required AIDS minority funds to be managed by nonprofit organizations run mostly by minorities.

“That’s un-American,” Supervisors chair Bill Campbell said. “What is American is if you want to deliver a service to someone, you find the best person to deliver it. The federal government is at fault for putting the program in place in the first place.”

ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) – The Maryland House will not call for the impeachment of a Baltimore judge who recently ruled in favor of same-sex marriage.

A House committee voted 20-3 to reject an impeachment proposal by Republican Delegate Don Dwyer, who earlier this session made a failed effort to put a constitutional amendment about same-sex marriage on ballots this fall.

Dwyer has said since the January ruling by Baltimore Circuit Court Judge M. Brooke Murdock that she should be removed from her post for incompetence and other things. His colleagues rejected Dwyer’s reasoning.

Murdock’s decision is on hold until an appeals court decides the question of whether Maryland’s 1973 same-sex marriage law violates the state constitution.

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) – A former domestic partner of the Minneapolis fire chief has filed a lawsuit against the chief for alleged job discrimination.

Fire Department Capt. Jennifer Cornell’s lawsuit accuses Fire Chief Bonnie Bleskachek of interfering with Cornell’s career.

Cornell alleges she’s been denied training opportunities. She’s suing Bleskachek and the city of Minneapolis for an end to the alleged discrimination and more than $75,000 in damages.

Through a spokesperson, Bleskachek declined to comment on the lawsuit.

Bleskachek is believed to be one of the only openly gay fire chiefs in the nation, and is the first woman to lead a professional fire department in Minnesota.

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) – The Oklahoma House voted last week to withhold state funding from local libraries that do not segregate reading material with sexually explicit or gay and lesbian themes from reading areas for children and young adults.

House members voted 60-33 to send the bill to the Senate after more than two hours of questions and debate in which opponents said the measure was a form of censorship and an unfunded mandate that would remove local control from library boards.

“It doesn’t seem that you can legislate morality,” said Rep. Debbie Blackburn, D-Oklahoma City. Blackburn and other opponents said an advisory board charged with developing an annual list of gay or sexually explicit material is the first step in an attempt to cleanse libraries of books some people consider offensive.

“I refuse to live under the Taliban,” Blackburn said referring to the Islamist nationalist group that effectively ruled most of Afghanistan from 1996 until 2001. “I refuse to live in Iran. This is America.”

Rep. Ray McCarter, D-Marlow, said small rural libraries will have a hard time complying with the mandates because the facilities are small and there is no room to create separate reading areas for sexually explicit material.

“The only place we can put the material is at the other end of the table,” McCarter said.

The measure’s author, Rep. Sally Kern, R-Oklahoma City, said children deserve a period of “protected innocence” in which they are shielded from sexually explicit material that she said is turning young people into “sex machines.”

“You can’t sell toothpaste without sex,” Kern said. “The American Library Association is out to sexualize our children.”

The measure now goes to the Senate, where opponents predict it will be killed.

TULSA, Okla. (AP) – A small Kansas church known for its anti-gay protests said it has stopped picketing for now at soldiers’ funerals in states with new laws against the practice.

“We’re not going to get arrested. We obey the law,” said Shirley Phelps-Roper, an attorney and member of Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, a fundamentalist congregation headed by her father, the Rev. Fred Phelps.

Westboro Baptist has outraged mourning communities across the nation by showing up at soldiers’ funerals with signs that read “God Hates Fags” or “God Made IEDs,” a reference to roadside bombs. Members of the congregation contend soldiers are being struck down by God for defending a nation that tolerates homosexuality.

In response, several states have passed or considered legislation restricting when and where picketers may demonstrate at funerals. Violators can be fined or jailed.

Westboro Baptist canceled demonstrations at recent funerals in Oklahoma, Indiana, Missouri and Wisconsin, which have new laws limiting such protests.

Phelps-Roper said the group will eventually protest in states with the new laws, but it will find a way to obey the new laws.

She also said the church is considering legal challenges to the laws. “We’re waiting until all the legislatures are over to see what tattered shreds they’ve left the Constitution in,” she said.

WASHINGTON (AP) – As public schools cope with conflicts over homosexuality, they can now get some tips from an unlikely pair: conservative Christians and gay advocates.

Leaders of those groups have agreed on guidelines for how educators, parents and teachers should deal with any aspect of school life involving sexual orientation.

The guidance is meant to be a First Amendment framework for finding common ground – essentially, a way to get people talking instead of screaming at each other.

It comes as controversies over homosexuality and Christianity have roiled schools nationwide, whether the matter is a textbook, a course assignment or a student club.

Schools are encouraged to form a task force of people with divergent views, agree on ground rules for civil debate, understand the First Amendment and state law, keep parents informed and ensure kids don’t go to school in fear.

Still, leaders hailed the deal as a breakthrough, saying the lack of such basic civility is often what leaves community members feeling angry, shut out and ready to fight.

The accord comes from the very people who are typically the ones fighting – conservative Christians, who decry homosexuality as a sinful choice, and gay and lesbian leaders, who say many students are bullied at school just for being themselves.

Groups at polar ends of the gay rights debate – the Christian Educators Association International and the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network – helped write the guidelines. They will promote them to the hundreds of thousands of people they represent.

The superintendents who run the nation’s schools have also endorsed the guidance, as has a prominent group of teachers and curriculum specialists.

CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) – A federal judge has refused to grant a review to the case of Russell Henderson, one of two men convicted in the 1998 murder of gay University of Wyoming student Matthew Shepard.

U.S. District Judge Clarence Brimmer rejected Henderson’s motion for a writ of habeas corpus. Henderson’s attorney, Tim Newcomb, argued that Henderson was never told of his right to appeal, thus effectively denying Henderson his right to appellate counsel.

A state district court and the Wyoming Supreme Court previously rejected Henderson’s motion.

In April 1999, Henderson pleaded guilty to his role in the robbery and murder of Shepard. He was sentenced to two consecutive life sentences, but prosecutors agreed not to seek the death penalty because of the plea deal.

Henderson and Aaron McKinney beat Shepard and tied him to a fence outside Laramie in October 1998. Shepard was alive when he was found 16 hours after the beating, but died later from his injuries. The murder ignited a nationwide debate over whether more laws were needed to discourage hate crimes.

McKinney is also serving two life terms.