LOS ANGELES (AP) – Brokeback Mountain co-star Randy Quaid has dropped a lawsuit over his compensation for the Academy Award-winning film.

Quaid had sued Focus Features and producers David Linde and James Schamus in March, claiming he was fleeced into working cheaply by the filmmakers’ assertion that Brokeback Mountain was “a low-budget, art-house film, with no prospect of making any money.”

Brokeback Mountain, whose three Oscars included best director for Ang Lee, topped $82 million at the domestic box office.

Quaid had been seeking at least $10 million. His publicist, Susan Madore, said Quaid decided to drop the lawsuit after his lawyers told him Focus agreed to pay him a bonus, which he wants to split with other principal cast members.

Focus Features denied making any settlement with Quaid.

“The circumstances of him dropping the suit are as mysterious as the circumstances under which he filed his claim,” Focus spokesperson Adriene Bowles said. “Focus Features never negotiated, offered or agreed to any settlement agreement with Mr. Quaid or his attorneys, but we are happy to put this behind us, and do wish [him] all the best.”

Brokeback Mountain features Quaid as a hard-nosed sheep rancher who hires Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal’s characters, two young cowboys who share a summer of love while tending the flock and then carry on a love affair for decades.

DENVER (AP) – In her new book, the openly gay daughter of Vice President Dick Cheney says a national proposal to ban same-sex marriage “would write discrimination into the constitution.”

Mary Cheney uses her book, Now It’s My Turn, to recall her childhood in Wyoming, her father’s rise through politics and her days at Colorado College in the early 1990s, according to the Rocky Mountain News.

Cheney later worked for Colorado companies such as Coors Brewery and the Colorado Rockies. She now works for AOL Inc. and lives in Great Falls, Va., with her partner. Her book was released May 9.

She does not name key backers of the proposed constitutional amendment, Sen. Wayne Allard and Rep. Marilyn Musgrave, both R-Colo. But she said it tested her resolve to remain as a key campaign staff member during President Bush’s re-election bid in 2004.

Cheney wrote that she had been scheduled to be in the gallery for Bush’s State of the Union speech in January 2004 until she saw text of the speech in which Bush declared, “Our nation must defend the sanctity of marriage.”

“I didn’t want to be there when the members of the House and Senate and all the invited guests applauded the president’s declaration,” she writes. “I sure wasn’t going to stand up and cheer.”

She also criticizes those who have tried to use her sexual orientation to advance their political causes. She noted that Democratic vice presidential nominee John Edwards mentioned her during the 2004 vice presidential debate.

“What gave him the right to use my sexual orientation to try to score political points?” she writes. “People on the far right have paraded around with signs calling me the Bride of Satan, and people on the far left have denounced me on the Internet as a Nazi sellout.

“In general, I try to ignore most of the insults hurled from the political fringes, although I do sometimes find humor in the more outrageous comments.”

The memoir was announced last year by Threshold, a new subdivision of Simon & Schuster devoted to conservative books. It is run by GOP strategist Mary Matalin.

Cheney said she told her parents she was a lesbian when she was in high school. She said her father told her, “You’re my daughter, and I love you, and I just want you to be happy” – a stance she said has helped her stand by him through the years and work on his campaigns.

When her father agreed to be Bush’s running mate in 2000, she says she told him: “Personally, I’d rather not be known as the vice president’s lesbian daughter. But if you’re going to run, I think the country would be lucky to have you. I want to do whatever I can to help out the campaign. And you’d better win.”

CORAL SPRINGS, Fla. (AP) – A 10-year-old girl was barred from singing a ballad bashing President George W. Bush at her elementary school talent show because her principal deemed the song inappropriate and too political.

“Dear Mr. President,” performed and co-written by pop star Pink, criticizes Bush for the war in Iraq and other policies including his stance on gay rights. Nancy Shoul said her daughter Molly should be lauded for choosing lyrics that are full of substance and that the ban violates her daughter’s right to free speech.

“If this was a student singing a pro-administration song, no one would quibble with it,” Shoul said. “The principal is just running scared and doesn’t want to upset any parents.”

Park Springs Elementary Principal Camille Pontillo declined to comment. But a Broward County School District official said the principal has the right to determine what music her students can hear at a school function.

“This is a fifth-grade student that wants to perform a song filled with lyrics about drug use, war, abortion, gay rights and profanity,” district spokesperson Nadine Drew said. “This is an elementary school that includes kindergartners and pre-K students.”

The song does not mention abortion, and the profanity is the word “hell.”

Some of the lyrics read: “What kind of father would take his own daughter’s rights away. And what kind of father might hate his own daughter if she were gay.” Another portion criticizes Bush for the war: “How do you sleep while the rest of us cry? How do you dream when a mother has no chance to say goodbye?”

The White House had no immediate comment.

Molly said she thought the song was “really cool” because it spoke about important subjects such as war and homelessness.

If the ban stands, Molly said she plans to select a new song for the show later this month with a message she thinks school officials will not object to: a hip-hop song about two girls fighting over a boy.

HONOLULU (AP) – The state will pay $625,000 and change its polices at the state’s only youth prison to settle a lawsuit over alleged abuse of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender inmates, according to terms of a proposed settlement.

The lawsuit involves three inmates at the Hawaii Youth Correctional Facility who are lesbian, transgender and gay, the attorney general’s office said.

They claimed the guards made humiliating remarks and failed to protect a male-to-female transgender prisoner from other inmates. They also said correctional officers didn’t intervene when they were harassed by other youths in the prison.

The state attorney general’s office and the American Civil Liberties Union have agreed to the dollar figure of the settlement, but they’re still trying to decide how to divide the money, Deputy Attorney General John Molay said.

The settlement would give $600,000 to the three inmates and the ACLU. The other $25,000 would be spent on a contract with an expert to form new sexual orientation policies at the youth prison, Molay said.

“I believe this is an appropriate settlement,” he said. “We’re trying to agree to what the state’s obligation will be in terms of drafting the new policies.”

The state does not admit wrongdoing in the settlement of the lawsuit, which was filed in September.

Lois Perrin, legal director for ACLU of Hawaii, said the agreement will help ensure that the sexual orientations of teenagers kept at the Hawaii Youth Correctional Facility are respected.

“The goal of the settlement is to ensure the conditions at HYCF are safe for all current and future lesbian, gay, transgender and bisexual wards,” Perrin said. “We are working with the state to ensure that appropriate policies, procedures and training will be adopted.”

An injunction ordered by U.S. District Judge Michael Seabright in March called for the state to create policies against physical and verbal abuse of inmates perceived to be lesbian, bisexual, gay or transgender.

It also prevents guards from locking youths alone or addressing them with slurs “used to convey hatred, contempt or prejudice.”

A separate agreement reached in February with the Justice Department forces the state to fix the prison.

In that case, inmates said they were beaten, locked alone in cells for days and denied medical care by untrained guards.

BOSTON (AP) – The same court that made Massachusetts the first state to legalize same-sex marriage is now mulling whether citizens have the right to get around its ruling by amending the state constitution to define marriage as the union of one man and one woman.

The Supreme Judicial Court, which cleared the way for same-sex marriages with its landmark ruling in 2003, heard arguments May 4 on a referendum proposed for the state ballot in 2008.

Supporters of same-sex marriages are trying to block the proposal that would ban future marriages for same-sex couples. They say the state constitution bars any citizen-initiated amendment that seeks to reverse a judicial ruling.

“The people shouldn’t be able to directly attack” a court decision, said Gary Buseck, legal director of Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders, which filed the lawsuit.

Attorney General Tom Reilly, who approved the question for the ballot, maintains the proposed amendment would not reverse the court’s ruling or invalidate existing same-sex marriages. Instead, the question, if approved by voters, would amend the state constitution so that no additional same-sex marriages could take place.

“This amendment does not put the people in the position of declaring” the court decision wrong, Assistant Attorney General Peter Sacks argued.

More than 7,000 same-sex couples have wed in Massachusetts since same-sex marriages were allowed beginning in May 2004.

The court did not indicate when it might rule.

Reilly, a Democratic candidate for governor, initially opposed same-sex marriage, but later became a supporter, saying he has seen that the same-sex unions have not hurt Massachusetts.

“While the attorney general does not personally support the proposal, we are confident that letting this question proceed was the proper legal decision,” Reilly spokesperson Meredith Baumann said in a statement.

The ballot question was certified after more than 124,000 signatures were collected.

Before it can be placed on the 2008 ballot, supporters must win the votes of 50 lawmakers – 25 percent of the Legislature – in two successive legislative sessions.

CONCORD, N.H. (AP) – The state was wrong to deny health care benefits and bereavement leave to the families of two lesbian employees, a judge ruled.

The state bars gays and lesbians from marrying, so requiring its employees to be married to get family benefits is discriminatory, Merrimack County Superior Court Judge Kathleen McGuire ruled in a case brought by two state employees who are lesbians.

“The state’s attempt to couch the issue as one wherein all unmarried individuals are impacted equally, avoids … reality,” McGuire wrote.

Attorney General Kelly Ayotte will appeal, her office said.

Gov. John Lynch believes the state should extend benefits to families headed by same-sex couples, but understands Ayotte’s decision to appeal the legal issues, Lynch spokesperson Pamela Walsh said.

Patricia Bedford of Concord and Anne Breen of Salisbury won the ruling, which reverses a decision by the state Human Rights Commission in 2002. Both women work for state technical colleges, and each is raising a child with a long-term partner.

Lawyer Karen Loewy of Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders of Boston said her clients won’t be the only ones to benefit if the state Supreme Court upholds McGuire’s ruling. Concord lawyer Peter Callahan agreed.

“It would apply to all state employees, and [the state’s] enforcement would have to change immediately,” he said.

NEW YORK (AP) – A lawyer for student artists whose exhibit at a public war memorial was shut down after city officials deemed it too racy said they plan to sue on free speech grounds.

The exhibit, which included representations of male genitalia, watercolor paintings of gay sex and a live rat, was housed in the city-owned Brooklyn War Memorial until the city Parks Department shut it down the day after it opened.

The World War II memorial is used as gallery space by Brooklyn College, which is part of the City University of New York system. The Parks Department said an agreement with the school stipulated that art exhibits at the memorial be “appropriate for families.”

The college moved the artwork and planned to keep it on campus until it could be installed in space donated by a developer, school spokesperson Colleen Roche said in an e-mail.

Civil rights attorney Norman Siegel, a 1965 Brooklyn College graduate, said he will represent the students in a First Amendment suit against the city, the parks department and the college administration.

“A clear message must be sent to the [Mayor Michael] Bloomberg administration that government is not the appropriate body to judge the value of art,” Siegel said.

The students plan to sue regardless of whether the exhibit is reinstalled in the new space, he said.

The college would not comment on a “hypothetical” lawsuit, Roche said.

A spokesperson for the city Law Department did not immediately return an e-mail.

The 18-student show, a graduation requirement, is the thesis for the master’s of fine arts degree and had been scheduled to run through May 25.

CINCINNATI (AP) – A federal appeals court has upheld a ruling in favor of prison supervisors who disciplined the institution’s chaplain for refusing to allow a gay inmate to lead a musical group during a religious service.

The decision, handed down by the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, upholds a 2004 decision by the U.S. District Court in Columbus.

The Rev. William Akridge filed a suit alleging supervisors violated his constitutional rights when he was disciplined in 2002 for refusing to allow the inmate to preside over a choir or band during a Protestant service at Madison Correctional Institution in London in central Ohio.

The appellate court agreed with the lower court, which rejected Akridge’s claim that his refusal was speech protected by the First Amendment. The courts held that Akridge’s comments were not protected because they were made in his role as chaplain, not as a private citizen.

Named in the suit were Reginald Wilkinson, then-director of the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction; Alan Lazaroff, Madison’s warden; and Bobby Bogan Jr., who was Madison’s deputy warden of special services and Akridge’s immediate supervisor.

The inmate had filed a complaint with Bogan alleging that the minister was discriminating against him based on his sexual orientation. Akridge told Bogan he was not allowing the inmate to lead the group because the inmate was openly gay.

Bogan ordered Akridge to allow the inmate an opportunity to be a choir director. Akridge refused and Lazaroff later charged him with insubordination and fined him two days’ pay, the appellate decision says. Akridge was later voluntarily transferred to a different Ohio institution.

In court documents, Akridge says he believes “homosexual behavior is immoral, sinful, perverse and contrary to the teachings of the Bible and the Christian faith.”

One of his lawyers, David Langdon of Cincinnati, co-authored an Ohio constitutional amendment that bans same-sex marriage.

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) – A federal judge ruled that city officials who barred a man from preaching about homosexuality in a section of Riverfront Park during the 2003 PrideFest gay and lesbian celebration violated the preacher’s free speech rights.

U.S. District Judge William W. Caldwell made the ruling in a lawsuit by members of the World Wide Street Preachers Fellowship, a group of Christian evangelists. But he declined to issue a permanent order preventing the city from enforcing a 50-foot buffer zone at PrideFest, as the preachers requested.

Randy King, a city spokesperson, said the ruling hurt the city’s ability to protect groups with permits to use city parks. “We disagree that it is a First Amendment issue because the First Amendment does not protect profanities, epithets and obnoxious behavior,” King said.

Caldwell rejected an argument by the city that it needed to be able to eject protesters to ensure the safe use of parks. “At any time that a protester’s conduct goes beyond protected First Amendment activity, a police officer can charge the protester with the appropriate criminal offense,” he wrote.

BURLINGTON, Vt. (AP) – Four fraternity members accused of making pledges wear cowboy clothes and suffer homophobic insults in a Brokeback Mountain-themed initiation ritual face $1,000 fines under the state’s anti-hazing law.

University of Vermont police said the civil penalties stemmed from a March 2 party at the Phi Gamma Delta house based on the movie about gay cowboys.

“What they did, which I felt was homophobic in nature, was inappropriate,” UVM Police Chief Gary Margolis said.

Phi Gamma Delta’s alumni advisers have denied accounts of anti-gay remarks and heavy drinking at the party.

Chittenden County Deputy State’s Attorney Ed Sutton said his office did not plan to file criminal charges and believed the case “would be better dealt with in context of a university judicial review.”

University police singled out four officers in the fraternity, Margolis said. Scott Curley II, 18, of Bridgewater, Mass.; Eric Freedman, 20, of West Simsbury, Conn.; Bill Holohan IV, 20, of Branford, Conn.; and Geoffrey Robinson, 20, of Middletown Springs, were given tickets May 5, police said.

Vermont’s anti-hazing law was passed after a 1999 hazing scandal at UVM in which members of the hockey team were accused of forcing freshman players to drink warm beer until they vomited and march in an “elephant walk” while holding each other’s genitals. The allegations triggered the cancellation of the last 15 games of the hockey season.

WASHINGTON (AP) – Former Sen. John Danforth says a conservative push to ban same-sex marriage through a constitutional amendment is silly, calling it the latest example of how the political influence of evangelical Christians is hurting the GOP.

Danforth, a Missouri Republican and an Episcopal priest, made the comments in a speech to the Log Cabin Republicans, which support gay rights. He said history has shown that attempts to regulate human behavior with constitutional amendments are misguided.

“Once before, the Constitution was amended to try to deal with matters of human behavior; that was Prohibition. That was such a flop that that was repealed 13 years later,” Danforth said.

Referring to the marriage amendment, he added that perhaps at some point in history there was a constitutional amendment proposed that was “sillier than this one, but I don’t know of one.”

The Senate is scheduled to vote in June on a constitutional amendment that its supporters hope will head off any decision in the federal courts that could legalize same-sex marriage. The measure would need to be approved by two-thirds of those voting in the House and Senate and then be ratified by at least 38 state legislatures.

But Danforth said he is opposed. “The basic concept of the Republican Party is to interpret the Constitution narrowly, not expansively, so that legislatures, and especially state legislatures, can work out over a period of time the social issues in our country,” he said.