BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) – A Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) national assembly voted to create some leeway for gay and lesbian clergy and lay officers to serve local congregations, despite a denominational ban on partnered gay and lesbian ministers.

A measure approved 298-221 by a Presbyterian national assembly keeps in place a church law that says clergy and lay elders and deacons must limit sexual relations to man-woman marriage. But the new legislation says local congregations and regional presbyteries can exercise some flexibility when choosing clergy and lay officers of local congregations if sexual orientation or other issues arise.

The decision concluded a hard-fought struggle lasting years between liberals and conservatives in the 2.3-million-member denomination. Conservatives lost two last-ditch efforts to kill or delay the measure.

The Presbyterian establishment, including all seminary presidents and many officials, promoted the flexibility plan, which was devised by a special task force. The idea is to grant modest change to liberals but mollify conservatives by keeping the sexual law on the books.

It’s unclear whether that will work.

“We have been painfully aware that in some ways our greatest challenge was not preparing for this assembly but preparing for what happens after this assembly,” the Rev. Clifton Kirkpatrick, chief executive at denominational headquarters, told delegates after they voted.

The Rev. Blair Monie of Dallas, who chaired the committee dealing with the issue, said “this is not an ‘anything goes’ proposal. In fact, it will make the examination of officers more rigorous.”

But a series of conservative delegates disputed that.

“When the constitution is set aside and something mandatory is reduced to something optional, it destroys the constitution,” said Robert Gagnon, a New Testament professor at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary and author of a book opposing same-sex relationships.

Gagnon said the denomination had reached “a transition point” that broke from Jesus’ teaching in favor of man-woman monogamy.

Thirteen evangelical caucuses issued a joint statement that the assembly’s actions “throw our denomination into crisis.” They said this “marks a profound deviation from biblical requirements, and we cannot accept, support, or tolerate it. We will take the steps necessary to be faithful to God.”

But Jesus was cited from the other side, too.

Oregon youth delegate Jamie Moon said she found the assembly debate disheartening. She said she became Presbyterian because “Jesus Christ was love. Jesus Christ was acceptance. He said come to me and be my disciple.

“He wants us to love everybody. Raise your hand if you’re not a sinner,” she told the assembly.

TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) – Churches in the Desert Southwest Conference of the United Methodist Church are formally opposing a proposed amendment to the Arizona constitution that would ban same-sex marriage.

In a resolution passed during the conference’s annual meeting in Scottsdale last month, denomination leaders said marriages are threatened by forces such as infidelity, violence, addictions, lack of communication and commitment, and “not how marriage is defined.”

Approximately 53,000 United Methodists live in Arizona, with 9,510 in Pima County.

The United Methodist Church is a mainline Protestant denomination.

The state Court of Appeals has ruled that Arizona law already bars same-sex marriage, but backers of the constitutional amendment say the issue needs further resolution.

The initiative’s broad language would bar the state, counties, cities and school districts from creating or recognizing any legal status for unmarried heterosexual couples.

Health benefits Tucson and Pima County offer their employees’ domestic partners, as well as the city’s domestic-partner registry, would be nullified.

Backers of the proposal from the Scottsdale-based Center for Arizona Policy, a conservative public-policy group, introduced their “Protect Marriage Arizona” campaign in May 2005 with kick-offs at several Christian churches around the state.

The campaign offers pastors packets to promote the initiative.

Arizona’s three Roman Catholic bishops endorse the ballot initiative “to prevent the redefinition and devaluation of the institution of marriage.”

Supporters must gather 183,917 signatures to put the proposal on the 2006 Arizona general election ballot.

A coalition opposing the proposal – Arizona Together – includes several religious leaders who say the idea is discriminatory.

LITTLE ROCK (AP) – The former head of an Arkansas grant program to help people with the virus that causes AIDS has been sentenced to five months in prison and three years’ supervised probation after pleading guilty to helping steal money from the program to purchase a $5,038 diamond ring and for other expenses.

Lola Thrower, 45, of North Little Rock, a former employee of the state Health and Human Services Department, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Bill Wilson, according to a June news release from U.S. Attorney Bud Cummins.

Thrower pleaded guilty Feb. 9 to a federal charge of aiding and abetting the theft of government property.

The charge involves more than $10,559 in funds for HIV and AIDS services. In exchange for her plea, federal prosecutors dropped three similar charges against her.

A federal indictment accused Thrower or her husband, Malik Blackmon, of several schemes that resulted in misuse of government funds. Among them was a scheme in December 2003 involving a nonprofit organization called BMON that they created. The indictment said Thrower directed that a check from the account of Positive Voices, an Arkansas HIV-AIDS policy group that Thrower set up, be used to pay a $10,000 invoice owed by BMON for promotional items.

The indictment said $3,085 of the money transferred into the BMON account from the Positive Voices account went toward paying the invoice, and $5,038 of the money was used to buy a diamond ring with a debit card on the BMON account.

Cummins’ news release said Wilson sentenced Thrower to five months’ imprisonment, to be served in a community-confinement facility, plus three years’ supervised release and $17,720 restitution.

Blackmon and another co-defendant, Lamar Wright, have been accepted into a pretrial diversion program, Cummins said, while Lee Langston entered a guilty plea and was sentenced to three years’ probation.

SANTA CRUZ, Calif. (AP) – Mourners overflowed a memorial last week for a University of California, Santa Cruz chancellor who died in an apparent suicide plunge from a San Francisco high-rise.

More than 400 family members, friends and colleagues of Denice Dee Denton packed a music recital hall on the university’s Santa Cruz campus, and hundreds more were rerouted to a nearby auditorium for a video simulcast.

Some sobbed and clutched hands with their partners as university leaders praised Denton, 46, as a staunch diversity advocate, empathetic listener and bullheaded leader eager to boost the role of women and minorities in the hard sciences.

A single picture of a smiling Denton was displayed on the stage, and a mournful piano interlude brought many in the audience to tears.

No mention was made of what might have driven Denton to leap from the 43-story luxury apartment building last month, and she was remembered instead as someone who remained tough despite a brief but stormy tenure.

“We lost a brave, noble and incredibly effective warrior,” said Denton’s longtime partner, Gretchen Kalonji, in an animated speech urging supporters to channel their love into carrying on Denton’s work. “Denice was a very pragmatic person. She didn’t like talking about things. She liked to get things done.”

Denton was plagued since her 2004 hiring at Santa Cruz with allegations of lavish spending and receiving inappropriate perquisites at a time of budget cuts and fee hikes.

She drew the anger of university employee unions and student activists for demanding $600,000 worth of renovations to her campus home during contract negotiations, and for helping Kalonji secure a $192,000-a-year job with the university as director of international strategy development.

Denton was also ensnared in the roiling UC pay controversy, having accepted a $21,000 moving allowance and a $16,000 signing bonus that were granted to her in violation of university policy and reporting procedures, according to an independent audit released in April.

Denton’s sister, Derri Denton, read a family statement that described her as a strong-minded and innovative leader who “drew outside the lines, ran with scissors, and spoke out of turn” as a child and carried her enthusiasm into her role as academic leader.

“To know Denice was to love Denice,” the statement read. “If Denice’s mission in life had been to paint a wall mural, the result would have been the Sistine chapel.”

Other speakers included UC President Robert Dynes, who described Denton as a pioneer unafraid to challenge other university leaders, and civil rights activist Angela Davis, who said Denton created a powerful legacy despite unrelenting criticism.

Amelia Timbers, a recent UCSC graduate who worked with Denton as an intern, tearfully struggled through a speech extolling her resolve under pressure.

“Talking to the chancellor made a person feel valued,” she said. “She answered critics calmly, confidently and with a grave honesty that I have never seen before. She treated people like she had something to learn from them.”

Audience members described feelings of anger and sorrow over Denton’s death, and expressed the importance of continuing her social justice work.

“It’s sadness and motivation at the same time,” said UCSC student Hanni Kruggel of Palo Alto, who looked up to Denton since meeting her at a women’s leadership conference a year ago. “I feel like I can conquer and overcome battles just as she did.”

Denton, who in 1996 went to the University of Washington and became the first woman to lead an engineering college at a major U.S. research university, was also cited as an inspiration to the gay and lesbian communities.

“Denice so clearly lived through oppression herself, as a woman and a lesbian in the male-dominated field of engineering,” said Lynn Jacob, 43, a university mail sorter from Santa Cruz. “When she spoke, I could really tell she lived through that, and she was adamant she didn’t want it to happen to everyone else. That gave us all tremendous hope.”

WEST HOLLYWOOD, Calif. (AP) – This little city has some big political ideas.

It was one of the first cities in the nation to ban indoor smoking in public places and to call for businesses to offer benefits to domestic partners of employees.

Now the enclave of coffee shops, bookstores and nightclubs wedged between Hollywood and Beverly Hills has aimed its lance at marijuana law with a nonbinding resolution urging deputies that patrol the city to go easy on pot smokers.

“We didn’t declare it legal, but declared the sheriff should spend more time pursuing people that do more serious crimes,” said Hernan G. Molina, deputy to Councilmember John J. Duran, who sponsored the resolution.

The resolution is unlikely to have a major impact on its own. But taken with successful ballot measures in bigger cities like Denver and Seattle that limit punishment for possessing small amounts of marijuana, it reflects what could be a shifting attitude across the country.

“The municipalities are moving ahead of the feds,” said Patrick Murphy, a drug policy expert at the Public Policy Institute of California in San Francisco.

“We’re starting to see some folks that are saying the laws on the books are still on the books, but maybe we’re going to treat them a little differently. And maybe that’s a precursor to getting them off the books,” Murphy said.

The West Hollywood City Council last month unanimously declared that it’s not city policy to target marijuana possession and consumption by adults in their homes. It did, however, urge the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, which patrols the city, to keep pursuing dealers, young users and people who smoke pot in public.

It was the latest in a series of moves that have put the city ahead of the political curve – and sometimes completely off the chart – since its incorporation in 1984.

Known for its gay community, the city of 35,000 people was one of the first in the country to recognize domestic partnerships. It was a leader in supporting medical marijuana use and outlawing the sale of Saturday night specials – the small, cheap handguns that city leaders said contribute to violent crime.

One city resolution urged Congress to repeal the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy on gays, lesbians and bisexuals in the military.

The marijuana resolution was also meant to send a message.

“Marijuana should be legalized and regulated,” Molina said. “In order for the federal government to get it, smaller communities have to start doing things to send the message upward.”

On the ground in West Hollywood, residents and authorities said little was likely to change as a result of the resolution.

One reason is the city does not directly oversee the Sheriff’s Department. Instead, it contracts with the agency rather than fielding its own police department.

Another is the resolution won’t supersede state and federal drug laws that don’t require the arrest of people found with less than an ounce of the drug.

Only 139 of the 6,900 drug offenses reported in the area from Jan. 1, 2005, to Jan. 31, 2006, resulted in marijuana citations, said sheriff’s Capt. David J. Long, commander of the West Hollywood substation.

Most came when deputies found marijuana on suspects in other crimes, he said.

“It has been a very low priority up to this point,” Long said.

Pharmacist Kimmy Runse has never seen anyone hassled for pot in the city, even though she has clients who use it as medicine.

The City Council passed its resolution as the West Hollywood Civil Liberties Alliance, a marijuana smokers rights group, prepared a ballot measure calling for similar action.

Council members wanted to save taxpayers the expense of a ballot measure and also saw an opportunity to take a stand on another big-picture issue.

“The message is that what you do in private is your own problem,” Molina said.

DENVER (AP) – The state Supreme Court has brushed aside complaints from advocates of domestic partnership seeking to bump a competing measure off the November ballot.

The court upheld the wording of a measure that would bar the state from recognizing anything “similar to” marriage for same-sex couples.

Backers of a ballot measure that would allow same-sex couples to register as domestic partners challenged the measure.

The proposed ban on same-sex marriage would be a constitutional amendment and, if approved, it would trump the domestic partnership proposal.

However, another proposed constitutional amendment that may be on the November ballot would allow domestic partnerships, said Jody Berger, communications director for the Coloradans for Fairness and Equality Action Fund.

BOSTON (AP) – A lesbian couple from Rhode Island who were denied a marriage license in Massachusetts argued in court that a century-old Massachusetts law should not bar them from marrying here.

A lawyer for Wendy Becker and Mary Norton, of Providence, R.I., argued the 1913 law that prohibits nonresidents from marrying in Massachusetts if their marriage would not be allowed in their home state does not apply to Rhode Island because that state’s laws do not “expressly prohibit” same-sex marriage.

“Rhode Island has implicitly decided not to stand in the way of its citizens who want to marry here,” said Michele Granda, an attorney with Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders, which represents Becker and Norton.

Becker and Norton, a couple for 18 years, filed a notice of intention to marry in Massachusetts days after the state began performing same-sex marriages in May 2004. But they were denied a license after state officials cited the 1913 law.

In March, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled that Massachusetts could use the 1913 law to bar same-sex couples from Connecticut, Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont from marrying here because those states explicitly prohibit same-sex marriage. But the high court sent the part of the case involving New York and Rhode Island couples back to superior court, saying it was unclear whether same-sex marriage was prohibited in those states.

Superior Court Judge Thomas E. Connolly heard arguments on the Rhode Island case last month. No date has been set yet for a hearing on the New York case.

Assistant Attorney General Peter Sacks argued that Rhode Island statutes use gender-specific terms – including both “bride” and “groom” – and make it clear that their intention is to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman.

Becker and Norton, who are raising two children together, said their desire to get married was a natural extension of their long relationship.

“We feel like the word ‘marriage’ has a particular meaning of dignity, love and respect. We want that for our families,” Norton said after the court hearing.

“It’s sad that we have to go to court to get married,” Becker said.

Connolly said he expects to issue his ruling in the case this summer.

In 2002, Connolly dismissed a lawsuit filed by seven same-sex couples who challenged the state’s ban on same-sex marriage. His ruling was reversed by the Supreme Judicial Court in its landmark 2003 decision legalizing same-sex marriage in Massachusetts.

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) – A mother plans to appeal a magistrate’s decision that she cannot use the state’s constitutional ban on same-sex marriage to take away her former partner’s visitation rights, the mother’s lawyer said.

Family courts often settle custody disputes between unmarried people and even people of the same sex, such as a grandmother and aunt or an adult sibling and a parent, according to the ruling by Magistrate Darrolyn Krippel of Franklin County’s domestic relations court.

“Granting custody of a minor child to a nonparent is done every day,” Krippel wrote in the June 22 opinion. “The granting of custody to these nonparents is not against public policy.”

Denise Marie Fairchild’s lawsuit had asked the court to cancel Therese Marie Leach’s rights, granted in 2001, to see Fairchild’s son.

Fairfield argued that Leach shouldn’t be considered a parent under Ohio law because she did not give birth to the boy, did not adopt him and cannot marry Fairchild because of the same-sex marriage ban.

The ban, which voters approved overwhelmingly two years ago, denies legal status to all unmarried couples, gay or straight.

The boy, conceived through artificial insemination, was born while the women were a couple.

Fairfield’s attorney, Keith Golden, said he was disappointed by the decision and would appeal to a Franklin County judge. He said he had tried to distinguish this case as “co-parenting” as opposed to a “run of the mill” case of shared custody.

As a result, the same-sex marriage ban is violated “by treating these people as parents,” Golden said.

The ruling makes clear that granting custody is not related to defining a marriage, said Camilla Taylor, an attorney with Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, a gay rights legal advocacy group representing Leach.

It shows “you can’t use a constitutional amendment as a weapon to attack a cherished relationship between a child and an adult that that child considers a parent,” Taylor said. “Therese raised that little boy since his birth, and he should be allowed to see her.”

At Fairchild’s request, the Franklin County Domestic Relations Court gave Leach parenting rights in 2001, saying the women “shall be treated in the law as two equal parents of their minor child.”

They sought the agreement so Leach could make medical decisions for the boy in Fairchild’s absence, Fairchild said.

HARRISBURG, Penn. (AP) – Lawmakers took another step toward putting a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage on the ballot in Pennsylvania.

The state Senate approved the proposed amendment 38-12.

Pennsylvania already has a law defining marriage as between a man and a woman. But Senator Jane Orie and other Republicans warned that without a constitutional amendment, a judge could act on a legal challenge and effectively legalize same-sex marriage or civil unions.

Opponents questioned the need to guard against a hypothetical challenge. “Mind your own business, stay out of the bedroom,” said Senator Vincent J. Fumo, a Democrat.

Amending the state constitution requires approval by the House and Senate in successive two-year sessions of the General Assembly and then the approval of voters in a statewide referendum.

Senators must now work out differences with a version passed by the House, which also prohibits civil unions.

The chambers have until Aug. 7 to reach agreement if they want to stay on track for getting the measure on the 2007 ballot.