ACLU Demands Rapid City Compensate Discharged Air Force Sergeant, Itawamba Defends Decision To Cancel Prom While Parents Plan Private Prom To Which Constance McMillen Is Not Invited, One Life To Live Kish Plot, Virginia AG Cuccinelli Argues Homosexual Acts Detriment To Society

The American Civil Liberties Union is requesting that Rapid City, South Dakota pay 800,000 in restitution to Jene Newsome, the gay Air Force sergeant honourably discharged after city police outed her to the military, which, under the policy of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” were expected to discharge her. Newsome, in Fairbanks, Alaska where she is staying with family, said that “there is not going to be any amount of money that ever compare to a 20 year career and my sense of self and service serving my country.” On November 24th, detectives sent a fax to the Office of Special Investigations, seeking a review of a police account of the arrest of Cheryl Hutson four days earlier on an Alaskan warrant for grand theft. The fax made special mention that Newsome was “very uncooperative” in the arresting officer’s request in “contacting her spouse.” The Rapid City police force Friday, ahead of the demands sent by ACLU, released an eight page report exonerating the force of any and all wrongdoing.

In Mississippi, an attorney for the Itawamba County School District in Fulton wrote in a filing with a United States District Court that the school board opted to cancel the high school prom in order to settle the “very explosive and disruptive issue of the district’s ban on same sex dates and argues that Itawamba Agricultural High School senior Constance McMillen “wishes to make the defendant district the site for a national constitutional argument over gay and lesbian rights.” The American Civil Liberties Union has filed suit in a federal court against the district and the school petitioning the court to reinstate the prom and to rule that the school board’s behaviour throughout has been a violation of 18 year old McMillen’s constitutional right to free expression. Buried in the school board’s response to the ACLU demands is information that the parents of students at Itawamba Agricultural High have organized a private prom in a furniture mart in nearby Tupelo, Mississippi, and that Constance is still not invited.

Understanding the surprising cultural resonance of the soon to conclude gay storyline on ABC’s One Life To Live, and why its demise should be mourned.

Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, who still contends that President Barack Obama needs to prove he is indeed an American citizen and whose anti-gay rhetoric seems to know no end, is interviewed by Richmond, Virginia CBS Channel 6 news and among the discussion is whether homosexuality is actually a detriment to society. Cuccinelli says “the acts are. You certainly want everybody in your society to be integrated in the society, so, that’s a focus that I’d like to take, but there’s a distinction. And it’s one that the General Assembly seems to be wrestling with every year, and we’ll leave that one to them for now.”