Palm Springs Police Chief Gary Jeandron is asking the gay community to help fight crime.

“The police are not all-wise, all-knowing. I need your help,” the chief said, adding that he was creating a team to focus on gay-specific crime issues, such as gay-bashing. The team would be a part of the city’s police advisory committee.

“We want to identify what the problems are and work toward a solution,” he said.

Jeandron’s plan was disclosed during the second forum the chief has held in recent months to address crime and safety issues affecting the GLBT community.

Violence against gays in the city spurred the first forum in March. The Palm Springs Human Rights Commission sponsored the meetings after a series of hate crimes.

In 2001, 20 hate crimes were reported in Palm Springs, 17 of which were based on sexual orientation, according to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports. In 2000, 13 hate crimes were reported, 11 of which were based on sexual orientation.

The number of U.S. employers offering health insurance benefits to same-sex domestic partners rose by 16 percent last year, according to a study released by the Human Rights Campaign.

The annual report also found a sharp increase in the number of local governments that passed laws in 2002 barring workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation.

At least 806 employers of all sizes expanded their health benefits in 2002 to include same-sex partners. A total of 5,698 employers offered health benefits to same-sex partners by the end of last year, according to the study by the Human Rights Campaign Foundation.

The number of Fortune 500 companies offering domestic partner benefits to same-sex couples grew by 13 percent for a total of 169 at year’s end. ChevronTexaco Corp.; Sears, Roebuck and Co.; and Procter & Gamble were among the companies that introduced the benefits.

Married couples still get more work benefits than gays and lesbians. But Kim I. Mills, the foundation’s education director and editor of the report, said progress is being made.

The United Way of Miami-Dade County, Florida, will no longer give nearly a half-million dollars a year to the local chapter of the Boy Scouts of America, citing the chapter’s failure to provide gay sensitivity training for its leaders.

At a private meeting May 13, the United Way’s board of directors voted unanimously to discontinue the annual $480,000 grant after the agency’s current fund-raising campaign ends June 30.

The funds represent about 20 percent of the Scouts’ South Florida Council operating budget. Most of the money goes to programs in the area’s poorer communities.

“It’s a serious blow to the council’s ability to deliver Scouting programs,” council spokesperson Jeff Herrmann said.

At least 50 other United Way offices nationwide, including Seattle and San Francisco, have pulled their contributions since a 2000 U.S. Supreme Court ruling upholding the Scouts’ right to ban gay leaders.

Two Minneapolis, Minnesota, theologians say the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America should consider approving same-sex couples in a new anthology commissioned by presidents of the denomination’s eight seminaries.

Deciding a policy on gays and lesbians is the most divisive issue facing the denomination of 5 million members, which is awaiting a 2005 report from a study panel.

The panel’s director, James Childs Jr. of Trinity Lutheran Seminary in Columbus, Ohio, compiled the anthology, Faithful Conversation.

Mark A. Powell of the Columbus seminary wrote that the Bible’s view of heterosexual unions as “God’s original design does not of itself rule out the possibility of the church recognizing the legitimacy of some homosexual unions.”

Powell believes Jesus favored “mercy and compassion” and the church should grant “exceptions” to the Bible’s heterosexual model. He reads the Genesis story of the creation of Eve as meaning that no one should be alone.

About one in every eight graduates walked out of a May 18 commencement at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, before the keynote address by Sen. Rick Santorum, who recently infuriated gay groups and others with derogatory remarks about gays and lesbians.

Santorum, the Senate’s third-ranking Republican, didn’t mention the walkout or the controversy directly.

“We are all called to love one another, even people we disagree with, even people who hate us for what we believe,” he said.

Students were offered an opportunity to leave before Santorum was introduced to receive an honorary degree and make his speech, and about 100 graduates walked out amid competing boos and applause.

Some students had urged the Jesuit university to rescind Santorum’s invitation after he likened gay behavior to bigamy, polygamy, incest and adultery in an April 7 interview with The Associated Press. He later said he intended the remarks as a legal analysis and didn’t intend to comment on individual lifestyles.

“Senator Santorum and I are at completely opposite ends of the spectrum,” said graduate Sara Foglesong, among those who walked out. “I am not incestuous. I am not a bigamist. I just happen to be bisexual. It offended me.”

Ninety-three law school professors from Pennsylvania’s state-related universities have signed a letter urging the state’s public universities to offer benefits to same-sex domestic partners.

The letter was sent to the head of each public university from law professors at Temple University, Penn State University and the University of Pittsburgh. Those three schools are state-related, in that they receive state funding, but are not owned by the state.

The letter said Temple’s recent decision to offer the benefits means “no other university will stand alone on this issue.”

Pennsylvania’s State System of Higher Education includes 14 state-owned public universities. System spokesperson Kenneth Marshall said he’s not aware that the system or any of its schools has received the letter. No state system schools offer same-sex benefits, he said.

Some legislators have threatened to pull state funds from Temple since it announced plans to offer the benefits in February. At Penn State, a private fund set up by an anonymous donor has enabled a handful of staff to receive the benefits.

Barnes & Noble Booksellers Inc. is being sued by the family of a 12-year-old boy for a mix-up that left some copies of a skating magazine with a DVD featuring gay pornography.

The boy was horrified when he played the DVD on a television and found that instead of skating, it depicted an “aggressive homosexual pornographic film,” says the lawsuit filed May 16 in 2nd District Court.

A copying error imprinted pornography on about 10 percent of the DVDs offered in a sleeve of Rejects skate magazine, editor Wes Driver told the boy’s mother. Driver reportedly asked retailers to check and return magazines that had the errant DVD.

“Barnes & Noble chose not to remove it. Our belief is that Barnes & Noble was certainly notified there was an issue, and they chose not to remove the magazines,” said the family’s attorney, Jeffrey Gooch.

Gooch said the boy’s mother got “laughed off” when she complained at the bookstore.

New York-based Barnes & Noble declined comment.

The boy, using birthday money, bought the magazine in March from a Barnes & Noble store in Bountiful, Utah.

His family’s suit seeks unspecified damages for his suffering, emotional pain, medical costs for therapy, loss of enjoyment of life and other factors.