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Gav IIIIIIIIQ

SYLACAUGA, Ala.
There’s been another horrific gay
murder.

Billy Jack Gaither, 39, was
found beaten to death with an ax
handle. His body then was burned
on a pyre of old tires.

Steven Mullins, 25, and
Charles Butler, Jr., 21, were arrest-
ed and charged with murder. They
were each held on $500,000 bail.

Deputy Al Bradley said
Mullins and Butler apparently
knew Gaither from going to the
same bars. He said the two
claimed the textile mill worker
made a pass at them “in early
February, after which they. plotted
his murder.

Mullins telephoned Gaither
and the two picked up Butler at a
nightclub where he was participat-
ing in a pool tournament, authori-
ties said.’

The men went to a secluded
boat ramp, where Gaither was
beaten and thrown into the trunk
of his own car. He was then taken
to the banks of Peckerwood Creek,
where many area churches used to
hold baptisms.

Bradley said two tires were set
on fire with kerosene atop a con-
crete platform overlooking the
slow-moving water.

Gav killer

LOS ANGELES _A California
man has pleaded guilty to murder-
ing five gay men_ because he
thought it would stop the spread of
AIDS.

Juan Chavez, 34, avoided a
possible death sentence in the cap-
ital case by unexpectedly chang-
ing his plea about 1 1/2 weeks into
the trial, said prosecutor Mike
Duarte. A

He is scheduled to be sentenced
June 21.

During the trial, Duarte told
jurors that Chavez lured the men

to their homes, supposedly for sex, ’

then robbed and strangled them.

He was also accused of taking
the victims’ cars after killing them.

Chavez confessed to the mur-
ders while serving a prison sen-
tence for an unrelated 1996 kid-
napping, according to a probation
department report. In September
of that year, he was charged with
strangling the five men in 1986
and 1989.

Ilrag [IDES Monica
SYDNEY, Australia — The lat-
est drag craze involves President
Clinton’s former paramour.
Monica Lewinsky lookalikes
dominated Australia’s Gay and
Lesbian Mardi Gras parade this
year. _
Dozens of Monicas — men
dressed in blue evening dresses
and black wigs — were greeted
with cheers and applause as they
danced to blaring disco music
behind a float bearing a large
painting of the White House.
-Each year the parade —
which is one of the world’s
largest gay pride rallies — fea-
tures characters that have struck
a chord with gay society, such as

TV character Xena: Warrior
Princess.
Organizers said between

750,000 and one million people
lined the parade route.

N0 M0!!! Hall HISSBS
SAN FRANCISCO —— A
school district has been told its
students can’t be reassigned to
another class just because a
teacher is presumed to be gay.

The Rio Bravo-Greeley Union
School District wrongfully fos-
tered diiferent treatment toward an
eighth-grade science teacher based
on his perceived sexual orienta-
tion. Chief Deputy Labor
Commissioner Jose Millan wrote.

The decision prohibits the dis-
trict from discriminating against
James D. Merrick — a former
teacher of the year award winner
— in any aspect of employment.

However, while it also pro-
hibits removal of any more stu-
dents, the ruling does not express-
ly require the return of any stu-
dents to Merrick’s class.

Fifteen students had been trans-
ferred from his class before the
ruling. ,

A teacher for 40 years, Merrick
was hired by the district in 1994.
He has neither said he is gay nor
denied it.

Hate IIIIIIIBS

WASHINGTON — A number
of congressmen are trying to win
approval for a federal hate crimes
statute.

“No one says hate crimes are
overblown now, not afier this year
of savage crimes,” said Sen.
Charles Schumer, D-NY, a co-
sponsor of the Hate Crimes
Prevention Act of 1999, a replica-
of last year’s bill.

Last month, white supremacist
John William King was sentenced
to death in Texas for chaining
James Byrd, Jr., a black man,
behind a pickup truck and drag-
ging him to his death.

In Wyoming, two men have
been charged in the October slay-
ing of gay, college student
Matthew Shepard, who was pistol-
whipped and lashed to a fence. In
Alabama, another two men have
been charged with last month’s
beating death and burning of Billy
Jack Gaither, a gay textile worker.

“We owe it to the families of
Byrd and Shepard and Gaither and
perhaps others we don’t know,”
said Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich.,
who is sponsoring the bill in the
House with Reps. Connie Morella,
R-Md., Michael Forbes, R-N.Y.,
and Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., the
first openly gay woman elected to
Congress.

“IInn't ask. don't
tell” don't work

WASHINGTON — If this is
what it produces, “don’t ask, don’t
tell” doesn’t seem to be working.

Harassment of homosexuals in
the military more than doubled
last year, according to the
Servicemembers Legal Defense
Network.

The group counted 400 cases of
anti-gay harassment — including
death threats + in the military last
year, compared with 182 viola-
tions in 1997, a 120 percent
increase.

The network found 511 inci-
dents —— many overlapping with
the 400 harassments — in which
service members said they were
asked about their sexual orienta-
tion and their cases were pursued
by military investigators or com-
manders until they quit or were
dismissed. In 1997, the legal
defense network counted 359 such
instances.

The Pentagon declined imme-
diate comment on the report.

There were 1,145 gay dis-
charges from all service branches
last year, the Pentagon reported in
January. In 1997, the total was
997, the highest number since
1987. The number hit a low of617
in 1994, the year the “don’t ask,
don’t tell” policy took effect.

louisiana SIIIIIIIIIV

NEW ORLEANS — It’s safe

to have sex in Louisiana now.

A state judge has thrown out
the state’s sodomy law, saying the
statute unconstitutionally crimi-
nalized private sexual behavior by
adults.

‘N «THE .’."“—’”."-‘W’-‘,»5 5- -“- -’.9‘.?"~'.,L -‘.9-99 77.7

“The state has presented no
evidence, much less the required
compelling state interest, to justify
its intrusion on plaintiffs’ constitu-
tionally protected right of priva-
cy,” Judge Carolyn Gill—Je_fferson
wrote.

The law made consensual oral
and anal sex a felony punishable
by five years in prison.

The ruling was the second vic-
tory for opponents of the sodomy
law. In February, the state’s 4th
Circuit Court of Appeal reversed
the conviction of a man found
guilty of having oral sex with a
woman. The appeal court said the
law violated privacy rights.

John Rawls, attorney for the
gay men and women who chal-
lenged the law, predicted the deci-
sion will be appealed and upheld
by the state Supreme Court.

SISIEIS IIEIIW

SAN FRANCISCO ——The sis-
ters are causing a stir in‘ San
Francisco.

Catholic leaders are upset that
the city granted a permit for an
Easter Sunday street party thrown
by the Sisters of Perpetual
Indulgence, a theater troupe of
habit-wearing drag queens.

The Sisters have a permit to
close a section of a road in the

largely gay Castro District to eel-
ebrate their 20th anniversary.
Allowing a group that “mocks

the Catholic Church” to close a '

public street on Easter is compara-
ble to “allowing a group of neo-
Nazis to close a city street for a
celebration on the Jewish feast of
Passover,” said Maurice Healy, a
spokesman for San l"‘rancisco’s
Roman Catholic Archdiocese.

Ilrag IlI‘0Ill

PIERSON, Fla. —~ Charles
Rice wore a lloor-length rcd
evening gown, red satin shoes,
gloves and matching rhinestone

jewelry to his high school prom.

But school oflicials weren’t too
keen on the 18-year-old's plan to
dress in drag. They initially said
Rice would be refused entrance to
the prom if he showed up in drag.

Principal Peter Oatman backed
down alter conferring with
Superintendent Bill Hall and
school district attorneys, as well as
reviewing news accounts ol" his
initial decision.

Hall said Rice gets to don his
gown for the prom only because
the principal let him wear skirts
and dresses to special events in the
past. Because of these prior
episodes, the school system would
have had a weak case ifthc matter
had gone to court, Hall said.V

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