Homosexuals

As the largest ever group of senior citizens now barges into old age, it's clear that things are going to be mighty different. On the leading edge of that generation are gay and lesbian senior citizens who are helping to define the new rules, starting with the basics: housing. Nationwide, there are the beginnings of a move to develop and build retirement communities for older gays and lesbians, a generally well-heeled segment of the senior population.

A coalition of lesbian and gay Vietnamese groups was told to "sacrifice" and not march in Westminster's annual Tet parade, a Lunar New Year event expected to draw as many as 10,000 spectators to Little Saigon this weekend, a spokesperson for the coalition said. The Tet parade, scheduled for Sunday, is a tradition dating back nearly three decades. Westminster officials played a key role in staging and funding the most recent events, and the LGBT coalition has marched in the parade the last three years -- over the objections of some religious leaders in Orange County's Vietnamese community.

Not too long ago, Rena Puebla and Ellie Genuardi had a hard time getting distributors to carry their unique cake toppers -- porcelain-like figurines that interchange to make gay, straight and interracial couples. When they pitched the figurines to home shopping networks, executives shot them down. Ditto mainstream stores. No one told them expressly why they wouldn't carry the decorations, but to the business partners who designed the diverse dolls, the message was clear.

WASHINGTON - An evangelical minister who was asked to give the benediction at President Obama's inauguration ceremony pulled out of the event Thursday after a controversy about comments he made against homosexuality in the 1990s. On Tuesday, the presidential inaugural committee announced that it had invited the Rev. Louie Giglio, head pastor of Passion City Church in Atlanta, to participate in the Jan. 21 ceremony. Soon afterward, the liberal website ThinkProgress posted excerpts and an audio file of a sermon Giglio gave in the mid-1990s, in which he criticizes homosexuality as profoundly antithetical to Christianity.

Televangelist Paul Crouch, founder of the world's largest Christian broadcasting network, has waged a fierce legal battle to prevent a former employee from publicizing allegations that he and Crouch had a sexual encounter eight years ago. Crouch, 70, is the president of Trinity Broadcasting Network, based in Orange County, whose Christian programming reaches millions of viewers around the world via satellite, cable and broadcast stations.

Soon after moving to Silver Lake last year, Keith Farr realized the daytime serenity of his neighborhood was deceptive. Once he awoke to the sounds of police making an arrest in his yard. Another night, he came home to find two men engaged in sex on the stairs to his second-floor duplex. At 2 or 3 a.m. on the weekend his street was as noisy as an airport terminal during the holidays, rowdy with men driving back and forth, hanging out on the sidewalks.

Strictly speaking, the graduation exercise that took place on the fourth floor of Men's Central Jail last week wasn't much of a rite of passage since the graduates weren't going anywhere any time soon. Nonetheless, the hourlong celebration in honor of 15 gay male inmates who had earned high school diplomas or GEDs, or completed 10-week courses in drug rehabilitation, anger management and life skills moistened as many eyes per capita as any traditional school commencement.

A federal trial on same-sex marriage focused Wednesday on the similarities and differences between homosexual and heterosexual couples, with a psychology professor citing "remarkable similarities." Letitia Peplau, an expert on couple relationships, testified that studies have found that the quality of heterosexual and homosexual relationships was on average "the same" as measured by closeness, love and stability. "On average, same-sex couples and heterosexual couples are indistinguishable," said Peplau, a UCLA professor of social psychology called by attorneys for two same-sex couples who are trying to overturn Proposition 8, the 2008 voter initiative that reinstated a state ban on same-sex marriage.

It has been 13 1/2 years since San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk was gunned down, along with Mayor George Moscone, in San Francisco City Hall. But Milk's remains have yet to find a final resting place, and for the last six years the ashes of the first avowed homosexual elected to office in California have sat in an urn in a corner of a vault in the office of the Congressional Cemetery here.

Luedtke's column was right on target. However, her arguments "for greater tolerance, the fundamental beliefs of love and brotherhood" should include the Missouri Synod Lutheran Church's position on women in the church. After a lifetime of hearing sermons on the "inclusive" nature of Christianity in the Lutheran Church, I'm still waiting for the power structure to actually practice it. I'd like to rephrase Luedtke's question: And how long will it take for the Missouri Synod Lutheran Church to accept practicing homosexuals and women among its clergy?

Responding to C.S. Pearce's Dec. 2 Op-Ed article, "The Christian case for gay marriage," reader Tony Hillbruner of San Gabriel wrote: "The Bible does not discuss gay marriage, but it condemns homosexual activity. In Romans 1:27, 'men ... were inflamed with lust for one another [and] committed indecent acts with other men.' 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 condemns a variety of 'wrongdoers,' including adulterers, male prostitutes and homosexuals. "Pearce cites Leviticus 20:13, but she focuses on its call to execute homosexuals and not on its core message: that a man who sleeps with a man has done something 'detestable.' While the punishment is foolishly excessive, this does not eliminate the biblical condemnation of homosexual behavior.

In a 1996 Supreme Court decision protecting gays and lesbians from discrimination, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote that Colorado voters had evidenced an unconstitutional "animus" toward homosexuality. Justice Antonin Scalia dissented, huffing: "I had thought that one could consider certain conduct reprehensible - murder, for example, or polygamy, or cruelty to animals - and could exhibit even 'animus' toward such conduct. " Seven years later, when the court overturned a Texas law that criminalized same-sex sodomy, Scalia again dissented, writing: "The Texas statute undeniably seeks to further the belief of its citizens that certain forms of sexual behavior are 'immoral and unacceptable' - the same interest furthered by criminal laws against fornication, bigamy, adultery, adult incest, bestiality, and obscenity.

Confronted by a gay student at Princeton University, Justice Antonin Scalia defended his past writings comparing laws against homosexuality to those prohibiting bestiality and murder, saying he was arguing that many laws are based on society's moral feelings. “If we cannot have moral feelings against homosexuality, can we have it against murder?” Scalia asked in response to a question. “Can we have it against other things? I don't apologize for the things I raise.” Scalia said he was not equating homosexual conduct with bestiality or murder.

WASHINGTON - Confronted by a gay student at Princeton University, Justice Antonin Scalia defended his writings comparing laws against homosexuality to those prohibiting bestiality and murder, saying he was arguing that many laws are based on society's moral feelings. "If we cannot have moral feelings against homosexuality, can we have it against murder?" Scalia asked in response to a question. "Can we have it against other things? I don't apologize for the things I raise. " Scalia said he was not equating homosexual conduct with bestiality or murder.

In 1954, psychologist Benjamin Karpman wrote a prescient book about "sexual offenders" in the United States. Karpman focused especially on homosexuals who were drummed out of government jobs on the grounds that their sexual orientation made them security risks. If you were gay, the argument went, you were susceptible to blackmail by communist spies. But the real problem lay in the taboo on homosexuality, which paved the way for exactly the kind of extortion that the government feared.

Brandon Spikes spends a lot of time on Twitter. The New England Patriots linebacker ought to know how it works by now. You tweet something, and it's not just your friends or followers or people with the same sense of humor as you that see it. Your words are out there on the World Wide Web (emphasis on the World Wide part). So when you post a joke on a sensitive topic, not everyone is going to get it. And it could become a pretty big deal. Spikes found that out after this tweet Wednesday: "I'm homophobic just like I'm arachnophobic.

Brandon Spikes spends a lot of time on Twitter. The New England Patriots linebacker ought to know how it works by now. You tweet something, and it's not just your friends or followers or people with the same sense of humor as you that see it. Your words are out there on the World Wide Web (emphasis on the World Wide part). So when you post a joke on a sensitive topic, not everyone is going to get it. And it could become a pretty big deal. Spikes found that out after this tweet Wednesday: "I'm homophobic just like I'm arachnophobic.

Italian Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, a rare and often outspoken liberal within the highly conservative Catholic Church hierarchy who was nevertheless often mentioned as a candidate for pope, died Friday. He was 85. Martini, a Jesuit and former archbishop of the important archdiocese of Milan, had Parkinson's disease. The archdiocese announced his death. For years, Martini had been Europe's most prominent liberal cardinal, frequently voicing openness on such divisive church issues as priestly celibacy, homosexuality and the use of condoms to fight AIDS.

BEIJING - Orgies and anal sex hardly seem the usual fodder of traditional Chinese folk art, but that is exactly what one Chinese artist is depicting in a series of provocative paper-cuts that are now being exhibited in Los Angeles for the first time. Paper-cuts originated in Eastern Han Dynasty China (AD 25-220) and are hung on windows or doors for good luck. But instead of the usual decorative flowers and birds, Xiyadie, whose pseudonym means "Siberian Butterfly," portrays graphic and daring depictions of homosexual love - long considered taboo in China.