SAN FRANCISCO (AP) – High schools across the city soon will no longer have Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (JROTC) programs after officials decided to eliminate them because of the Pentagon’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy regarding gay, lesbian and bisexual service members.

The Board of Education voted 4-2 on Nov. 14 to phase out the JROTC from schools in the next two years, despite protest from hundreds of students who rallied outside the meeting.

The resolution passed says the military’s ban on openly gay, lesbian and bisexual soldiers violates the school district’s equal rights policy for gays and lesbians. The school district and the military currently share the $1.6 million annual cost of the program. About 1,600 San Francisco students participate in JROTC at seven high schools across the district.

Cadets and instructors who spoke at the meeting and rallied outside argued that the program teaches leadership, organizational skills, personal responsibility and other important values.

“This is where the kids feel safe, the one place they feel safe,” said Robert Powell, a JROTC instructor. “You’re going to take that away from them?”

Mayor Gavin Newsom called severing ties with the JROTC “a bad idea” that penalized students without having any practical effect on the Pentagon’s policy on gays in the military.

“If people want to participate in it and their families want them to participate, I think they have a right to participate without putting them in the political peril of being in this ideological debate,” he said.

Lt. Cmdr. Joe Carpenter, a Pentagon spokesperson, has said he didn’t know of any other school district having barred JROTC from its campuses.

JONESBORO (AP) – The Clayton County sheriff’s department has charged an Emory School of Medicine doctor with a felony for not revealing his HIV-positive status to a 16-year-old boy who says he had sex with the physician.

Adam Lebowitz, 47, a resident at Emory School of Medicine and an emergency room doctor at Grady Memorial Hospital, was arrested Nov. 2 for soliciting sex from another teenage boy. He was released on $50,000 bond but was arrested again Nov. 8 at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. At the time he had an airplane ticket to Hawaii.

That arrest was for battery charges in DeKalb County in a case of road rage against a woman.

FBI spokesperson Stephen Emmett said the bureau has joined a probe by Clayton and Coweta counties into Lebowitz’s past. He said federal charges are possible against the doctor, but declined to say for what.

Coweta County Assistant District Attorney Ray Mayer said that federal agents are considering charging Lebowitz with possession of child pornography.

Clayton County Sheriff Victor Hill says the case remains under investigation.

Emory has placed Lebowitz on leave pending an investigation.

MACON (AP) – The Georgia Baptist Convention on Nov. 14 formally ended its 170-year relationship with Mercer University – a relationship that had grown increasingly troubled about the convention’s concerns that Mercer is more liberal than its Southern Baptist roots.

Convention members had voted last year to sever ties with the Macon, Ga., institution. The Nov. 14 second vote finalized the split, which means Mercer must seek Baptist funding from individual churches rather than the convention.

Mercer also has control now on choosing its trustees.

Mercer had prepared for the funding loss by cutting $8.5 million from its more than $171.5 million dollar budget this year. The convention funded $3.5 million in scholarships and another $2 million for the Georgia Baptist College of Nursing on Mercer’s Atlanta campus.

The convention already has transferred $25.5 million in endowment and trusts to Mercer.

Convention members were disturbed last year by a National Coming Out Day program on campus – called the Mercer Triangle Symposium – sponsored by a gay student group and supported by faculty and staff.

“The waters had been troubled for some time over a number of issues, but that seemed to be the straw that broke the camel’s back,” said Wayne Robertson, chair of the convention’s administration committee and pastor at Morningside Baptist Church in Valdosta, Ga.

The state convention met Nov. 13-14 in Duluth, Ga.

BOSTON (AP) – Twelve gay and lesbian veterans have appealed a federal judge’s decision to throw out a lawsuit in which they challenged the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy.

The Servicemembers Legal Defense Network filed the appeal on Nov, 13 in the First Circuit Court of Appeal in Boston, arguing the policy denies Constitutional rights to privacy, free speech and equal protection to gays, lesbians and bisexuals. “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” prohibits the military from asking about the sexual orientation of service members but requires discharge of those who acknowledge being gay, lesbian or bisexual or engaging in homosexual activity.

In April, U.S. District Judge George A. O’Toole threw out the lawsuit, ruling that Congress has the authority to establish the country’s military policy.

The 12 plaintiffs served in the Army, Navy, Air Force and Coast Guard.

In their appeal, the plaintiffs argue, the policy “embodies a startling disconnect.”

“At a time when the military is experiencing well-documented recruiting difficulties, and has been reduced to bending the rules to fill its ranks … the Armed Forces continue to discharge distinguished service members in substantial numbers simply because they are gay,” the appeal says.

The Bush administration has argued in court documents that the policy “rationally furthers the government’s interest in maintaining unit cohesion, reducing sexual tensions and promoting personal privacy.”

“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” has been upheld by appeals courts in several other jurisdictions. The appeals court in Boston has never been asked to rule in a case involving the policy.

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) – A male firefighter is the latest person to sue the Minneapolis fire chief, who is lesbian, claiming that she discriminated against him because he is a heterosexual man.

Elondo Wright alleges that Bonnie Bleskachek, the city’s first female fire chief, and her partner, a fire department captain, gave him bad reviews, harassed him and denied him advancement opportunities.

Bleskachek “adamantly” denied the allegations. She told The Associated Press the claims are based on rumors.

“I find it troubling,” she said. “This is all based on hurt feelings and conjecture.”

Wright’s lawsuit, filed Nov. 9 in U.S. District Court in Minneapolis, is the fourth against the chief this year alleging various acts of discrimination or harassment. The lawsuits, two of which have been settled, depict a woman who let her personal life interfere with work decisions.

Wright had filed a complaint with the Minneapolis Department of Civil Rights, and probable cause was found. But a settlement with the city was not reached so he sued.

GREENSBORO, N.C. (AP) – The Baptist State Convention of North Carolina voted on Nov. 14 to cut ties with congregations that affirm or approve of homosexuality, formally adopting a rigid anti-gay policy that allows the group to investigate whether member churches are gay friendly.

The policy adopted by the North Carolina convention, which includes more than 4,000 member churches and 1.2 million members, is even stricter than that of the national Southern Baptist Convention, according to a more liberal Baptist organization.

“It’s not something that we wanted to do, but homosexuality is the only sin that has its own advocacy group,” convention spokesperson Norman Jameson said. “Those advocacy groups are pushing us into this stance. Other denominations that waffle and waver on the issue year after year are getting torn apart.”

The vote changes the convention’s long-standing laws, which previously only required its members to support the convention through cooperation and financial contributions. Now any churches that “knowingly act to affirm, approve, endorse, promote, support or bless homosexual behavior” will be barred from membership.

“This action does not mean that you should avoid ministry to the homosexual community,” said convention executive director Milton Hollifield Jr. “Even though we believe that homosexuality is wrong, we still love and engage those in this lifestyle.”

The convention’s board of directors adopted a similar anti-gay policy in 1992, but its members had never voted to include the policy in its written articles of incorporation. And that past rule, unlike the one approved on Nov. 14, didn’t give the convention the authority to investigate gay-friendly churches.

Now, should two church members request an inquiry, the convention has the formal authority to act.

“It did not have teeth in it like it needed to have,” said convention president Stan Welch. “There was a general policy in place, and we needed something to say, ‘We’re going to act upon this and we’re going to follow through with it.’”

Sixteen churches in North Carolina will come under immediate scrutiny under the policy, Jameson said. Those churches are associated with the Alliance of Baptists, a Washington D.C.-based group that welcomes gays and lesbians as equal members. They contribute just $185,000 to the Convention’s $36 million budget, Jameson said.

The Alliance of Baptists said the new policy is stronger than a similar policy adopted by the Nashville, Tenn.-based Southern Baptist Convention – the nation’s largest Protestant body. The Southern Baptists changed their constitution in 1993 to say that “churches which act to affirm, approve, or endorse homosexual behavior” are not eligible for membership.