Elected representatives of the Episcopal Diocese of California voted overwhelmingly in favor of two resolutions last weekend that support LGBT people in the church.

The first resolution concerned blessings for same-sex couples. Until now, there hasn’t been a specific service for same-sex couples who wanted their unions blessed by the church. Now, there are three.

The vote Saturday, October 20 established set rites for same-sex couples and puts them on an equal footing with heterosexual couples, said Tom Jackson, president of Oasis, the LGBT ministry of the Episcopal Diocese of California.

“Now we have services we can use,” Jackson said. “We don’t have to make one up each time.”

The diocese consists of San Francisco, San Mateo, Alameda, Contra Costa, and Marin counties, and part of Santa Clara County. The diocese, which has 27,000 members, has offfered blessings for same-sex unions for 30 years.

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Rare enough but even more so in North Carolina

Jim Neal, the Democratic dark horse challenging North Carolina Republican Sen. Elizabeth Dole, has disclosed he is gay — making him one of the nation’s few openly homosexual candidates for a statewide office.

Neal, 50, a Chapel Hill investment banker, discussed his sexual orientation during an online interview with a liberal blog, NCBlue over the weekend. He said his family, friends and business associates already know.

“It’s no secret,” Neal said in an interview Monday. “Why would you not talk about the color of your eyes?”

Neal’s quest is unusual: He is seeking to become the second openly gay Senate nominee of a major political party in American history. The first was Ed Flanagan, who was the unsuccessful Democratic Senate nominee in Vermont in 2000, losing to then-Republican Jim Jeffords.

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GAYS SURPRISINGLY DIVERSE, STUDY FINDS

To judge from the images on network television and corporate advertising, lesbians and gay men share the same demographic niche: affluent, educated, urban - and usually white.

Wrong, wrong, wrong and wrong, says a new national demographic study that suggests lesbians and gays are more likely to be older, “responsible” suburbanites sharing a mortgage payment and listening to country music than young turks partying in the Castro or Chelsea.

“We wanted to bust some stereotypes,” said David Morse, president and chief executive of New American Dimensions, a Los Angeles market research company that joined forces with San Francisco-based Asterix Group, a brand strategy firm, in an attempt to paint a more nuanced portrait of the nation’s gays and lesbians.

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SINGAPORE: In an apparent counter move, a group calling itself “the Majority” has set up a website to collect signatures backing a call for the government to keep the law against gay sex.

The group, in an open letter to Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, asks the government to “do what is right and retain Section 377A for the future of our children and our nation”.

Under Section 377A of the Penal Code, it is illegal for men to have sex with one another. While prosecution is rare, those convicted can be jailed up to two years.

The online letter read: “Section 377A is a reflection of the sentiments of the majority of society. Most Singaporeans hold conservative family values and do not accept homosexuality as the norm.

“Repealing Section 377A is a vehicle to force homosexuality on a conservative population that is not ready for homosexuality.”

Repealing the law, the letter said, could lead to the redefinition of same-sex marriage and the trend of adoption by same-sex parents.

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Members of the anti-gay Westboro Baptist Church are urging  to support their stance on homosexuality.

The Topeka-based church says the Republican presidential candidate once “saw eye to eye” with them. Thompson was hired for a mid-1980s legal case in Kansas on the recommendation of Margie Phelps, daughter of Westboro founder Fred Phelps.

The church is now best known for protesting at soldiers’ funerals, claiming their deaths are retribution for the nation’s acceptance of homosexuality.

The Thompson campaign today dismissed the church as “a radical fringe group” looking for attention and said there’s “no way” members share Thompson’s values.

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We have witnessed the canonisation of Saint Albert Gore. We have had fresh confirmation of the transcendence among Democrats of the rather less saintly Hillary Clinton.

And we watched as debutant debater Fred Thompson, former senator for Tennessee and most recently of TV Law and Order fame, correctly named Stephen Harper as the Prime Minister of Canada in the latest Republican candidates’ forum.

Fred the fumbler? Fred the fainéant? Not a bit of it. Get such questions right and you’ve proved you have the foreign policy expertise to be President. But for me, the unsung victor of the political goings-on here last week was none of the above, but Rudy Giuliani.

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A YOUNG gay man who vanished after partying at one of Sydney’s trendiest inner-city dance clubs is feared murdered, his friends believe.

Matt Leveson, 20, has not been seen since walking out of ARQ in Taylor Square, early on Sunday, September 23.

The wildlife welfare officer, a regular at the club, was thought to be going home to Cronulla.

His family reported him missing when he failed to show for work the following Tuesday.

He had also stopped answering his phone.

Two days later Mr Leveson’s green 1999 Corolla hatchback was found dumped outside a public toilet at Waratah Park Reserve, Sutherland.

Police said evidence suggested he did not park it there.

They believe he “met with foul play”.

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The San Francisco Public Library wants to expand its gay history archive and is asking people to bring their personal photo albums to share snapshots of everyday gay life in the city.

The current public inventory is heavy on festivals - such as the Gay Pride Parade and Castro Halloween - and tragedies, such as the 1978 assassination of mayoral candidate and Supervisor Harvey Milk.

“We have newspaper archives from the News-Call Bulletin, but most of the pictures are criminalized - women getting arrested for dressing like men, people getting busted in a gay bar. They are sensational, and that was only one part of early gay history,” said city archivist Susan Goldstein, who is leading the photo effort.

Because the San Francisco Public Library is one of the first stops for authors, filmmakers and historians working on gay-related projects, the archivists and librarians want to make room alongside such notables as Randy Shilts and Armistead Maupin for the little guy, who might have skipped the bohemia at the Beat-era Black Cat Cafe or the Queer Nation street protests but played just as important a role in the city’s gay history.

On Sunday, library leaders will host Shades of San Francisco Photo Day, so that people of all stripes: stroller-pushing dads, drag queens, power-suit lesbians, teenagers, activists and homebodies can expand the city’s official gay record by adding pictures of regular days at home, work and play.

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HE may have been named this week as one of Australia’s 25 leading gays, but judge Michael Kirby didn’t think much of the crusade of two gay men to decriminalise homosexuality.

It was 1991, and the High Court judge and UN special representative was still eight years away from “outing” himself when Rodney Croome called his chambers at the NSW Court of Appeal.

The upper house in Tasmania had voted down a bill to decriminalise homosexuality. Mr Croome and his then partner Nick Toonan wanted Justice Kirby’s advice on whether they should lodge a complaint with the UN’s Human Rights Committee.

“They wanted to argue that, by tolerating the continuation of old crimes in Tasmania, the nation was in breach of its obligations under the covenant,” Justice Kirby writes in the current issue of Meanjin, a journal published by the University of Melbourne.

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An estimated five thousand gays and lesbians - and their friends and families - turned out for the 18th annual Joburg Pride Parade in Rosebank, Johannesburg, despite the cold rainy weather.

Following a performance by Flash Republic on the main stage, the Parade, consisting of over 30 floats and vehicles, and led by the Joburg Metro Police Department, set out through the streets of Rosebank at 11h30. And, as if on cue, the rain paused for the one and half hour duration of the Parade. Vibrant displays of the gay rainbow colours were evident on numerous floats as participants walked the circular seven - kilometre route. To the sound of thumping dance music and cheers from passers-by the Parade wound its way back to Zoo Lake. Placards and signs demanding equal rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people were visible among the participants.

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