SAN FRANCISCO (AP) – A proclamation from San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom’s office lauding a gay porn studio has prompted a change in city policy after the honor was issued without the mayor’s knowledge, city officials said.

Under the new policy, any controversial proclamations must now be cleared by one of the mayor’s top aides, Newsom’s spokesperson said Friday.

“If there are any questions about proclamations, they will be reviewed,” Newsom spokesperson Nathan Ballard said. “There’s just going to be a stricter review process from now on.”

Newsom typically does not review most of the nearly 2,000 proclamations issued in his name each year, as was the case with the honor for Colt Studio.

The document, bearing Newsom’s name, proclaimed Feb. 23 to be Colt Studio Day in honor of the gay porn production company’s 40th anniversary.

The proclamation drew the ire of conservative pundits including talk show host Bill O’Reilly, who skewered the city and its leaders for turning San Francisco’s image into that of a “modern day Sodom and Gomorrah.”

LOS ANGELES (AP) – A majority of primary care providers in Los Angeles County failed to advise their Latino patients to get tested for HIV, according to a new study.

The percentage of AIDS cases for Latinos in the county has increased from 20 percent of all new cases in the 1980s, when the epidemic began, to 43 percent in 2002, according to the latest figures available from the county Department of Public Health.

Researchers said the lack of HIV testing is one reason most Latinos who become ill find out they are HIV positive less than a year before developing AIDS.

The UCLA study, released Thursday, said only 41 percent of the 85 primary care providers surveyed had regularly offered advice about sexually transmitted diseases during the six-month period covered in the report.

“There are two issues here: a lack of health care access for Latinos in general and the cultural stigma attached to HIV/AIDS,” said Rosa Solorio, assistant professor of family medicine at UCLA’s School of Medicine who co-wrote the study.

A vast majority of the surveyed practitioners, who included doctors, nurses and physicians assistants, offered fewer than 20 HIV tests each during the period covered in the study, which was conducted in 2004 by the UCLA AIDS Institute. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends physicians in high-HIV risk areas offer testing to every patient.

“There are still many cultural taboos in Latino culture about sex,” Solorio said, offering one reason practitioners may have been reluctant to suggest HIV testing. “We just don’t talk about it publicly.”

Solorio said a patient’s fear about the cost of a test and subsequent counseling may also be a factor.

LOS ANGELES (AP) – A gay couple who hopes to marry one day has donated more than $1 million to the University of California, Los Angeles, to fund research on legal topics involving same-sex relationships.

The gift announced Friday from John McDonald and Rob Wright will support what is described as the nation’s first endowed academic chair in sexual orientation law.

The two say they want to promote objective research, but they also hope to aid the campaign for same-sex marriage and other gay rights issues.

“This is going to support legal scholarship, legal research and education that covers a whole area so fundamental to creating change,” said McDonald, 74, a former chief executive of a medical and hospital management firm.

McDonald and Wright, 58, who worked in advertising and real estate, have lived together for almost 25 years and are registered as domestic partners. The two live in West Hollywood and Colorado.

Some universities have chairs in gay and gender studies, but they’re usually in the humanities and social sciences and not in a law school.

A member of UCLA’s law faculty is expected to be picked for the chair in three to six months.

HONOLULU (AP) – Hawaii lawmakers effectively killed a proposal to create civil unions for gay couples by declining to vote on the legislation.

More than 100 people packed the House Judiciary Committee hearing Tuesday, many waving pink signs reading, “Civil Unions. Equal protection, justice for all.” At least 400 people submitted extensive written or oral testimony.

After five hours of testimony, though, the committee declined to vote. Representatives offered little explanation to the public, but it was a sign that the bill lacked enough support to become law.

Civil unions had been suggested as a way for the state to sidestep a controversy over same-sex marriage, but they proved to be nearly as contentious.

Opponents argued that civil unions were being used as a step toward legalizing same-sex marriage. Proponents said they want the legal guarantees granted to married couples, such as tax breaks, adoption rights and health benefits.

“This is essentially a re-examination of the same-sex marriage issue except with a different title,” said Kelly Rosati, a spokesperson for the Hawaii Catholic Church and executive director for the Hawaii Family Forum.

Gay rights advocates said the law was needed in order to give same-sex couples equal rights as heterosexuals.

“For me, it’s very clear cut that it’s gender discrimination,” said Scott Orton, who is gay. “I would like to take on a partner in the future and have the same rights as a married person.”

Hawaii nearly legalized same-sex marriages more than a decade ago before stiff public opposition came from family advocacy groups, the Catholic Church and the Mormon Church.

A decision by the Hawaii Supreme Court would have allowed same-sex marriages, but a 1998 constitutional amendment and a law defined marriage as between two people of opposite sexes.

Vermont, Connecticut and New Jersey already have civil union laws. Massachusetts is the only state to allow same-sex marriages.

OLATHE, Kan. (AP) – A music professor who knew that his lover once tried to kill himself strangled the younger man and tried to disguise it as a suicide, a prosecutor said as the professor’s second trial opened Tuesday.

But a defense lawyer countered that there was no physical evidence tying David Lee Stagg to the April 2004 death of William J. Jennings and said an unknown third person must have committed the crime.

Stagg, 59, who teaches at Central Missouri State University in Warrensburg, is charged in Johnson County District Court with first-degree murder.

His first trial last fall ended with jurors unable to reach a verdict after 11 hours of deliberation over two days.

Jennings, who owned a court reporting service, was 51 years old when he was found dead in the living room of his Shawnee home, his neck wedged in the base of a decorative wrought-iron bird cage.

In Tuesday’s opening statements, Assistant District Attorney Lannie Ornburn said the two men quarreled the evening of April 24, 2004, after having dinner and watching a movie at Jennings’ home.

Ornburn said Jennings was upset about their relationship, feeling that Stagg spent too little time with him.

The argument that night turned physical, he said, so much so that the assailant knocked the veneer off Jennings’ front teeth.

“Mr. Jennings was in a heck of a fight,” Ornburn said.

Knowing that Jennings had attempted suicide the previous fall, Stagg wrote a fake suicide note on Jennings’ laptop computer, Ornburn said. Crime lab experts concluded that the note was not saved in the same way Jennings saved other files on the computer, Ornburn said.

Defense attorney Tom Bath acknowledged that Stagg and Jennings had quarreled. But he said Stagg left and went to a condo that he co-owns on the Country Club Plaza in Kansas City, Mo.

Bath said DNA found under Jennings’ fingernails and on a stain on the computer desk tended to clear Stagg. He also said a fingerprint on a glass in the kitchen came from someone other than Stagg or Jennings – someone else who was in the house after Stagg left.

Stagg cooperated with police, Bath said, allowing them to examine his car, his clothes and his condo.

WASHINGTON (AP) – A federal appeals court ruled that the Bush administration can deny funding to non-profit AIDS groups that do not publicly disavow prostitution and sex trafficking. Overturning a lower court’s decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia said Tuesday that the AIDS groups’ free speech rights would not be violated if the money was linked to a pledge to uphold government policy.

At issue is the case of DKT International Inc., which provides family planning and HIV/AIDS prevention programs in 11 countries. The group, which helps distribute condoms to prostitutes and other sex workers in Vietnam, has refused to sign a pledge to support the Bush administration policies.

In 2005, DKT sued the U.S. Agency for International Development, contending its free speech rights were violated by a 2003 law requiring groups to explicitly oppose prostitution and sex trafficking in order to qualify for part of a $15-billion AIDS program. A U.S. District Court ruling last year agreed, saying the funding conditions insist that groups “parrot” the U.S. government’s position on prostitution.

But U.S. Circuit Judge A. Raymond Randolph said Congress has authorized the Bush administration to assist non-governmental organizations like DKT “on such terms and conditions as the president may determine.”

“The act does not compel DKT to advocate the government’s position on prostitution and sex trafficking; it requires only that if DKT wishes to receive funds it must communicate the message the government chooses to fund,” Randolph wrote in a 10-page decision reversing the lower court’s ruling. “This does not violate the First Amendment.”