COLORADO SPRINGS (AP) – The City Council has agreed to contribute more than $10,000 toward a downtown multicultural festival this summer despite some concerns over participation by gay groups and the possibility of anti-war protests.

Two councilmembers who had expressed reservations, Darryl Glenn and Tom Gallagher, joined other councilmembers in voting in favor of the city contribution on Tuesday but said organizers should not let the event become political.

The Downtown Cultural Festival on Aug. 18 will include presentations from ethnic and racial groups. Glen Bruels, co-chair of the Colorado Springs Diversity Forum, an organizer of the event, said gay groups, anti-war protesters and others would be allowed to participate if they were not disruptive.

Glenn had said including gay groups in the festival could lead to controversy over such issues as same-sex unions. Councilmember Margaret Radford had said gays did not belong in the same category as ethnic and racial groups.

POCATELLO (AP) – A jury has acquitted a 44-year-old man who had been accused of having unprotected sex with a woman in 2005 without first telling her he had the virus that can lead to AIDS.

Kelvin Crawford, of Pocatello, was charged in 6th District Court in June with two counts of transfer of bodily fluid which may contain HIV, a felony in Idaho.

A woman said she and Crawford had sex three times during a two-month relationship, including twice without a condom.

Crawford told detectives that he had told the woman of his status before they had sex, according to court documents. He said she might not have remembered this disclosure because she had been drinking at the time he told her, the documents said.

The woman said she had just two or three beers on the night in question, according to court testimony.

Jurors on Thursday returned their verdict in favor of Crawford.

CROWN POINT (AP) – A judge has sentenced a man to two years in prison for concealing that he was HIV-positive when he gave blood to a Hammond plasma center.

Michael Ivy, 46, of East Chicago pleaded guilty last month to donating or selling blood contaminated with the human immunodeficiency virus on Sept. 13 to Bio-Blood Component Inc.

In addition to two years in prison, Lake County Criminal Court Judge Robert Lewis ordered Ivy to serve a one-year probation.

When giving blood products to Bio-Blood last summer, Ivy checked the “no” box on a questionnaire that asked if he was HIV positive. Court records show he gave blood three times last September before Bio-Blood tested a specimen and found it HIV positive. State law requires contaminated blood to be destroyed.

Court records did not indicate whether Ivy received payment for his blood.

Ivy acknowledged he was diagnosed with HIV in August 2002. A doctor at St. Catherine Hospital in East Chicago confirmed the diagnosis in November 2002 and told Ivy he could never again give blood, plasma or tissue.

WASHINGTON (AP) – The Supreme Court on Monday declined to get involved in a dispute between two former lesbian lovers over visitation rights involving a 4-year-old child.

The child’s biological mother, Lisa Miller, had asked the justices to take the case because Vermont courts have ordered Miller to allow her former lover, Janet Jenkins, to see the child, Isabella, one week a month.

In 2000, the two women entered into a civil union in Vermont and they decided Lisa would use artificial insemination with an anonymous donor to have a child.

Isabella was born in Virginia in 2002 and the two women moved to Vermont, where they lived for a year before separating.

Miller renounced her homosexuality, returned to Virginia and denied Jenkins’ demands for visitation rights.

Relying heavily on the rulings by Vermont courts, the Virginia Court of Appeals said Miller is required to comply with visitation orders of the Vermont courts under the federal Parental Kidnapping Prevention Act.

Miller says the act conflicts with a more recent federal law, the Defense of Marriage Act, on same-sex marriage. That act says no state shall be required to abide by a law of any other state with respect to a same-sex marriage.

In asking the justices to take the case, Miller’s lawyers said state courts in Vermont and elsewhere have “eviscerated the protections afforded each state” under the Defense of Marriage Act.

Jenkins’ lawyers said Vermont courts were the first to take jurisdiction of the case and that Miller’s response was to “run to a Virginia court” seeking a result more to her liking. The case is Lisa Miller-Jenkins v. Janet Miller-Jenkins, 06-1110.

SEATTLE (AP) – The volunteer group that has organized an annual Seattle Pride celebration since 1975 says it is disbanding, while another group says it hopes to continue the June parade and festival.

Seattle Out and Proud said its debt of $102,000 to the city for the 2006 event at Seattle Center, combined with volunteer fatigue, prompted the decision to cancel its 2007 plans.

“People can still be proud … it just means we’re tired,” Weston Sprigg, vice president of Seattle Out and Proud, told the Seattle Times. He said the group is meeting with bankruptcy attorneys.

“It’s unfortunate but we are a supportive group of people that want the best for our community and hope now that someone will step up and take the events to the next level,” Sprigg said.

Each June, in cities across the country, gay communities honor the 1969 Stonewall riots in New York that marked the start of the modern gay rights movement.

Seattle’s Pride celebration, which has become one of the largest in the country, traditionally included a festival at Volunteer Park and a parade along Broadway, both on Capitol Hill, in the heart of Seattle’s gay community.

Organizers moved the festival to Seattle Center and the parade to downtown Seattle last year in an attempt to attract more widespread exposure and spread out a little, but they also gained $102,000 in debt and protests from some members of the gay community.

More than 200,000 people participated in the festivities last year, but the organization did not collect enough money from sponsorships and donations to cover its expenses, which were much greater at Seattle Center than on Capitol Hill.

“It’s successful with attendees; it’s successful visually and it’s successful politically,” Sprigg said. “It’s just not successful financially.”

Other organizations have expressed interest in saving Pride festivities in Seattle in 2007. Stepping up to take the lead is the Capitol Hill-based LGBT Community Center, which last year organized a march and music festival called Queerfest as a way to accommodate supporters who wanted to keep Pride weekend festivities on Capitol Hill.

Queerfest drew between 20,000 and 30,000 people, said Shannon Thomas, executive director of the community center.

This year, even before it learned Seattle Out and Proud might cancel Seattle Pride, the LGBT Community Center obtained a license to hold festivities June 23.

“We’re sad to see their announcement but excited by what the results could be. We’re figuring out a strategy for how we will become involved,” Thomas said.

She expressed confidence her group could pull off an event on the scale of previous Pride celebrations.

“We’re committed to making sure a Pride celebration occurs,” she said. “If we step up, we want to have a very viable plan in place.”

Those involved in organizing Pride events in the past said a successful event costs $50,000 or so.

George Bakan, editor of the Seattle Gay News, said, “there’s probably $20,000 to $30,000 that can flow from businesses in a matter of days if the community center decides to take the lead and organize a major Capitol Hill Pride day.”