NEWPORT BEACH (AP) – A trial has begun for a former aide to Rep. Dana Rohrabacher accused of having sex with a 14-year-old boy he met over the Internet.

During opening statements Thursday in Orange County Superior Court, Jeffrey Ray Nielsen’s lawyer argued that detectives were too quick to accept the boy’s word because they wanted a high-profile arrest.

Nielsen is accused of six felony counts of committing lewd acts on a child aged 14 or 15, having oral copulation with a person under age 16 and committing sodomy with a person under 16, the Orange County district attorney’s office said.

He could face more than six years in prison if convicted.

Nielsen, 36, worked for a national law firm when he was arrested in 2003 and was popular with some of Orange County’s powerful political leaders.

In the mid-1990s Nielsen was an aide in the Washington, D.C. office of Rohrabacher, R-Huntington Beach.

Prosecutors contend that Nielsen had a sexual relationship with a boy identified in court only as John Doe after the two met through a gay chat room in 2003.

The boy, who was 14 at the time, lived in a mobile home park in Westminster. Authorities contend that Nielsen had sex with the boy several times in the trailer and at the attorney’s Ladera Ranch condominium.

Nielsen remained free on $10,000 bail while his trial was postponed dozens of times.

In his opening statement Wednesday, Deputy District Attorney Dan Hess acknowledged that the sex was consensual and that the boy had lied about his age, telling Nielsen he was a year older. However, he argued that Nielsen knew the boy still was a minor.

Nielsen’s attorney, Paul S. Meyer, suggested that the high school freshman had fantasized about having a sexual relationship with Nielsen and then lied to back up the story after he made claims to a classmate, who told school officials. They, in turn, called police.

SANTA ROSA (AP) – A judge has finished hearing testimony in the case of a Mormon high school student whose parents claim she was unfairly disciplined for saying “That’s so gay” in class.

Kathy and Elden Rice sued the Santa Rosa school district in 2003, claiming a teacher who advised the school’s Gay-Straight Alliance targeted their daughter, Rebekah, for her religious beliefs.

Rebekah, 18, testified she made the comment to her friends as a 15-year-old freshman when they teased her about her Mormon faith. She said she never meant to demean homosexuals and said no one had warned her the phrase was offensive.

The Rices claim other students were not written up for saying the same thing. District officials testified about a half-dozen students that school year had been disciplined for using the phrase.

Testimony in the case was completed Wednesday in Sonoma County Superior Court. Judge Elaine Rushing, who heard the case without a jury, is set to issue a ruling after final arguments are filed in April.

LOS ANGELES (AP) – A Roman Catholic cardinal in Mexico responded to a lawsuit filed against him, saying he warned Cardinal Roger Mahony 20 years ago about a priest who was later charged with molesting eight boys.

In a declaration filed recently, Cardinal Norberto Rivera of Tehuacan, Mexico, said he sent a letter to Mahony in 1987 suggesting the Rev. Nicolas Aguilar had “homosexual problems.”

“I cautioned that the motivation for Fr. Aguilar’s trip to Los Angeles was ‘family and health reasons,’” Rivera said in his declaration. “The phrase ‘family and health reasons’ was used within the church to warn that a priest suffers from some sort of problem.”

Tod Tamberg, spokesperson for Mahony, said the cardinal never received a letter from Rivera.

“We’ve said this many times before, and Cardinal Rivera may very well have sent a letter, but nobody received it,” Tamberg said.

Rivera’s declaration was in response to a lawsuit filed by a man who claims he was abused in 1997 in Mexico at age 13. The abuse occurred after Aguilar returned to his job with the Diocese of Tehuacan following similar accusations while working in Los Angeles for a year, according to the suit.

The lawsuit named Rivera and Mahony and accused them of conspiring to conceal the priest’s conduct.

Aguilar also has been charged with 19 felony counts of committing lewd acts on a child in California. He is a fugitive and his whereabouts are unknown.

COLORADO SPRINGS (AP) – Two women who are part of a Christian gay and lesbian group were arrested Monday after refusing to leave the lobby at the Focus on the Family’s complex until they could speak to founder James Dobson.

Dotti Berry and Robynne Stapp, a lesbian couple from Blaine, Wash., were arrested shortly after 1 p.m. on suspicion of trespassing, according to their group, Soulforce.

Focus spokesperson Gary Schneeberger said the women asked to seek Dobson after their 11 a.m. tour was over. After speaking with the women for 10 to 15 minutes, they refused to leave.

“They were very respectful, very quiet,” Schneeberger said.

Through a statement issued by Lynchburg, Va.-based Soulforce, the woman said they were protesting Focus’ teachings on homosexuality, which include a belief that sexual identity can be changed.

Soulforce officials said Berry and Stapp are the first participants in a campaign called “Focus on the Facts.”

A Colorado Springs police spokesperson did not immediately return a call.

BOSTON (AP) – A federal judge on Friday threw out a lawsuit filed by parents who wanted to keep their young children from learning about same-sex marriage in school.

U.S. District Judge Mark Wolf said federal courts have decided in other cases that parents’ rights to exercise their religious beliefs are not violated when their children are exposed to contrary ideas in school.

Schools are “entitled to teach anything that is reasonably related to the goals of preparing students to become engaged and productive citizens,” Wolf said in his ruling.

Tonia and David Parker of Lexington sued after their 5-year-old son brought home a book from kindergarten that depicted a gay family. Another Lexington couple joined the suit after a second-grade teacher read the class a fairy tale about two princes falling in love.

Both couples claimed Lexington school officials violated their parental rights to teach their own morals to their children. They said they wanted to be notified before gay couples were discussed so they could remove their children from classrooms.

Wolf dismissed both federal and state claims made in the lawsuit but said the parents could refile the lawsuit in state court.

Attorney Jeffrey Denner said the parents would file a federal appeal and refile the state-court claims.

David Parker said school administrators violated a state law requiring that parents get an opportunity to exempt their children from any curriculum that “primarily involves human sexual education or human sexuality.”

But school attorney John Davis said the books did not focus on sex education, but merely depicted various families, including same-sex families.

The case attracted attention in part because Massachusetts is the only state that allows same-sex marriage.

NEW YORK (AP) – An AIDS organization has launched an ad campaign against Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., demanding that it lower the prices on two of its AIDS treatments in Mexico.

Ads with the headline “AIDS Drug Prices to Die For” began appearing on Thursday in the Los Angeles Weekly, according to the campaign’s sponsor, AIDS Healthcare Foundation. The foundation runs clinics in the United States and other countries, including two in Mexico.

Similar ads are slated to appear in the Village Voice in New York and La Jornada, a newspaper in Mexico City.

“In Mexico, Bristol-Myers Squibb charges four times as much for Reyataz and Videx as it does in the least-developed countries in Africa and parts of Asia, a cold-hearted business calculation which effectively makes these drugs out of reach for nearly all people living with HIV/AIDS in Mexico,” Michael Weinstein, the foundation’s president, said in a statement.

Bristol-Myers and other makers of AIDS drugs give rock bottom prices to very poor countries. However, according to the foundation, Mexico is considered a middle-income country so it doesn’t qualify for extremely low prices.

The foundation said an AIDS drug regimen in Mexico can cost as much as $6,000 a year, while the country’s per capita income is roughly $7,300 a year.

In a statement, Bristol-Myers said it sets its global pricing structure for HIV medicines to ensure patients worldwide have access to its medicines. Bristol-Myers added that its prices for HIV drugs in Mexico and other middle-income countries are based on a number of factors including affordability, incidence of HIV infection, and government commitment to the treatment of HIV/AIDS.