SHREVEPORT, La. (AP) – Police took three people into custody after they refused to leave a U.S. Marine Corps recruiting office Sept. 12 during a protest of the military’s ban on openly gay recruits.

The Virginia-based gay rights organization Soulforce said it was staging such protests in 30 cities around the nation in the coming weeks and months.

Organizers have dubbed the campaign Right to Serve.

The three taken into custody were among nine who tried to enlist at the Marine recruiting station on Mansfield Road.

It is a protest against the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy that dates back to the early days of the Clinton administration.

While running for the White House, Clinton vowed to overturn the military’s long-standing ban on gays, lesbians and bisexuals.

But, amid pressure from religious groups and concern from military leaders, he endorsed “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” As passed by Congress and signed by Clinton, the policy requires gay service members to keep their homosexuality hidden and refrain from same-sex sexual conduct.

The military is prohibited from asking recruits about their sexual orientation, and commanders are limited in their ability to investigate rumors or allegations of homosexuality in the ranks.

Soulforce condemns the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy as blatantly discriminatory and says it hurts recruiting at a time when recruits are needed.

Charles Moskos, a military sociologist at Northwestern University, said allowing openly gay service members would hurt the morale of the military rank-and-file and make many recruits uncomfortable.

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) – State Comptroller Alan Hevesi promised on Sept. 14 a “vigorous” defense against a lawsuit challenging his recognition of Canadian same-sex marriages when providing public retirement system benefits.

Four Westchester County residents, backed by an Arizona-based conservative group, claim in a lawsuit that Hevesi acted illegally when deciding in 2004 that the state retirement system would consider same-sex Canadian marriages in the same manner as traditional marriages. Under Hevesi’s decision, surviving same-sex partners from Canadian marriages could in certain cases be eligible for accidental death benefits or cost-of-living adjustments from the system.

The lawsuit prepared by the Alliance Defense Fund claims the comptroller lacks the authority to recognize such unions. The lawsuit notes that New York’s highest court, the Court of Appeals, ruled this summer that marriage is between a man and a woman.

“Mr. Hevesi doesn’t have the authority to recognize an out-of-state marriage, that’s something that is exclusive to the New York state Legislature,” Brian Raum, senior legal counsel for the alliance, said.

The group asked a state judge in Albany to stop the comptroller from acting on the policy while the lawsuit is being heard. Hevesi spokesperson Dan Weiller noted that under the intricate workings of the retirement system, the benefits mentioned in the lawsuit are generally not awarded too often. Because of the litigation, he could not comment on whether any same-sex partners wed in Canada received such benefits.

Hevesi said that though he supports same-sex marriage, his policy decision was based solely on laws governing the retirement system.

“We plan a vigorous defense because the law is clear: In New York State, we recognize marriages that have been conducted in Canada in accordance with Canadian laws, and that now includes same-sex marriages,” Hevesi said in a prepared statement.

The New York State and Local Retirement System covers 334,000 retirees and 648,000 current employees.

NORMAN, Okla. (AP) – The possibility of arrest served to curtail a protest against the U.S. military’s policy on gay soldiers. Nichole Rawls, 27, tried to enlist at an Army recruiting office in northwest Norman, Okla., on Sept. 13, but a police officer who arrived there told Rawls and others participating in the demonstration that they could be arrested if they stayed at the office after being asked to leave.

“I am aware of the Army’s ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ policy, but I don’t agree with it. I want to serve my country, but I am not willing to hide who I am in order to do so,” said Rawls, a Shawnee resident who is openly lesbian.

Rawls said she and her supporters chose the Norman recruiting station because they thought University of Oklahoma students might join a planned protest. “We were treated with respect, but I was saddened that the recruitment officer didn’t know about the Military Readiness Enhancement Bill, a bill now in Congress,” said supporter Pamela Disel, also of Shawnee. If approved, the measure would replace the present “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy with one of nondiscrimination.

Rawls’s enlistment attempt was part of the Right to Serve campaign, organized by Soulforce, a national youth organization supporting gay rights. People in about 30 cities are participating in the campaign.

TENNESSEE

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. (AP) – Promoters of a same-sex marriage ban on Tennessee’s Nov. 7 ballot are trying to scare voters into giving them money, an opponent of the measure said.

A fund-raising letter sent by Republican state Sen. David Fowler of Signal Mountain, as director of Family Action of Tennessee, predicts “pro-homosexual individuals and organizations” supporting the constitutional amendment will spend between $4 million to $6 million to defeat it.

Randy Tarkington, manager of Vote No on One, said Fowler’s prediction is “ridiculous.” The amendment would restrict marriage to unions between a man and a woman.

Fowler wrote the fund-raising letter for realmarriage.org, a campaign initiative of Family Action of Tennessee.

The letter seeks donations “to battle homosexual activist groups from Hollywood, New York and Washington, D.C., who have chosen Tennessee as their Southern battleground.”

The “radical homosexual activists” have chosen Tennessee as a key battleground in an effort to have marriage legally recognized for gays and lesbians, Fowler wrote.

Tennessee law already prohibits same-sex marriage, but the amendment would add the ban to the state constitution.

Fowler’s letter also cites Tennessee’s law on constitutional amendments, requiring approval by a margin of at least more than half the total votes cast for governor. Because the amendment requires votes exceeding 50 percent of those cast in the governor’s race, Fowler said voters who skip the amendment are voting no.

“What we’re doing is making sure that we meet the burden that’s upon us to get a certain minimum number of votes and making sure we don’t get caught unprepared by someone with a lot of money,” Fowler said.

Records at the state Registry of Election Finance shows that Fairness Committee, a campaign organization that Vote No on One started late last year, has spent about $25,000. Most of the money has been spent on printed materials and newspaper ads.

Tarkington said he did not know the amount raised since July 1, but “if we’ve raised $50,000 to date, that would probably be good.”

“If Mr. Fowler would tell me who is going to give us $4 million to $6 million, I’d really appreciate it. I’d like to get in touch with them,” he said.

Fowler said his $4 million to $6 million estimate is based on “a number that we heard from some individuals within the community supporting homosexual marriage.”

Tennessee is among at least seven states proposing bans on same-sex marriage this year.

HOUSTON (AP) – One of two Houston-area men whose 1998 arrests led to a U.S. Supreme Court decision that struck down bans on sodomy has died.

A spokesperson for a legal firm says Tyron Garner died Sept. 11 at a Houston hospital.

Mark Roy with Lambda Legal in New York City says Garner had been suffering from meningitis and had been in his brother’s care for the past six months.

Garner and John Lawrence were arrested after police – sent by a bogus report of an armed intruder – burst into Lawrence’s apartment and found the two engaged in consensual sex.

They were jailed overnight and charged with breaking the Texas Homosexual Conduct Law.

The U.S. Supreme Court in 2003 ruled what gay men and women do in the privacy of their bedrooms is their business and not the government’s.

The decision invalidated laws in Texas and 12 other states.

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) – Opponents of a proposed constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage in Virginia marginally picked up support during the past six weeks, according to a new statewide poll published Sept. 12.

Support for the proposed change in the state constitution dropped from 56 percent in late July to 54 percent in last week’s telephone survey of 625 registered voters likely to participate in the Nov. 7 election.

Opposition to the measure, meanwhile, increased from 38 percent to 40 percent, Mason-Dixon Polling & Research Inc. found. Six percent remained undecided, a figure unchanged from the previous survey.

Virginia is one of eight states voting on a constitutional ban on same-sex unions this fall. Voters in 20 states already have approved such amendments, most of them overwhelmingly. Virginia already has a law that forbids same-sex unions, as do 25 other states.

“I am very gratified by the fact that the momentum’s all been in our direction,” said Claire Guthrie Gastanaga, manager of the Commonwealth Coalition, a campaign leading opposition to the amendment.

“My bottom line is that every educated voter is a ‘no’ voter, so I’ve just got to find more voters and educate them,” she said.

Unlike the July poll, the polling firm read respondents the full text of the proposed amendment as it will appear on the ballot. In the previous poll, participants were read only the first of three sentences that would be written into the state Constitution.

The first sentence states that unions of one man and one woman will be recognized in Virginia as marriage. The final two sentences bar the state or any localities from recognizing any legal arrangements intended to approximate marriage.

Omitting the final two sentences was critical, Gastanaga and other opponents argue, because it could jeopardize the right of unmarried individuals to enter into personal contracts.