California Anti-Gay Bigot Senator Arrested For Drunk Driving Leaving A Gay Bar, The Vatican In Gay Prostitution Scandal, Notre Dame Newspaper Will Not Publish Anti-Gay Professor Anti-Gay Missive, Mexico City Gay Marriage Measure Becomes Law Today, Senator John Jerry Demands FDA Lift Gay Men Blood Donation Ban, Anti-Gay Bigot MP Jason Kenney Thinks Anyone Who Want To Leave Japan For Canada Ridiculous

California State Senator Roy Ashburn was arrested early Wednesday morning, for allegedly driving while drunk, the historically anti-gay legislator pulled over while leaving Faces, a popular mid-town Sacramento gay bar. Ashburn, who is a father of four, and a Republican who represents parts of Kern, Tulare, and San Bernardino Counties, since taking office has voted against each and every gay rights measure. According to police, when the arresting officers stopped the state-issued vehicle, the driver identified himself as Ashburn, and he was arrested, charged with two misdemeanours without incident. An unidentified male passenger was not detained. The Senator issued an apology for driving while intoxicated, but failed to address the more obvious questions raised by the incident.

Ghinedu Ehiem, a native of Nigeria, one of Pope Benedict’s ceremonial ushers and a member of an elite choir in Saint Peter’s Basilica, has been dismissed by the Vatican after he was implicated in a gay prostitution ring. His name appeared in the transcripts of Italian police wiretaps for an unrelated investigation into corruption charges that saw the arrest in February of four individuals, including Angelo Balducci, an engineer, who happens to be a construction consultant for the Vatican. Balducci and Ehiem are heard on the wiretaps discussing what police term “an organized network ... to abet male prostitution.”

Meet Dr. Charles Rice, a professor, naturally, at the University of Notre Dame, a member of the law faculty , the author of a once bi-weekly column in the student newspaper The Observer. That paper, you might remember, went all homophobic with the publishing of a deeply offensive and quite unfunny cartoon, and now, it seems to avoid any further scandal, it refused to publish Dr Rice’s latest missive, a long, deeply deranged diatribe against homosexuality, that is fallacious at best, and incendiary at worst. Dr Rice is calling censorship – naturally – and threatens not write another word for the paper, however his un-run column, poorly written, repeating the same point over and over – homosexuals “acts” are “objectively wrong” is available for perusal.

Thursday, in Mexico City, a law passed in December that permits gay men and women to legally marry takes effect. Mexico City is the first capital in Latin America to afford gay men and women full marital rights, including the right to adopt.

Massachusetts Senator John Kerry Thursday said that the American Food and Drug Administration’s ban on gay men donating blood is antiquated and discriminatory and needs to be repealed. Kerry is one of 16 United States senator who signed a letter to FDA requesting a lifting of the ban implemented in 1983, at the height of HIV/AIDS hysteria, when little good science existed explaining the detection and transmission of the virus that causes AIDS. Kerry said “not a single piece of scientific evidence supports the ban. A law that was once considered medically justified is today simply outdate and needs to end. Both Britain and Canada have identical policies in place, banning gay men from becoming donors.

Canadian Conservative Member of Parliament Jason Kenney, Minister of Immigration and Citizenship, who represents a riding in Calgary, Alberta, and who is already in embroiled in a scandal regarding the removal of any and all references of gay rights in Canada from a revised citizenship handbook, says that seven refugee status claims made during the Vancouver Winter Olympic games are “ridiculous,” because, according to Kenney, no one from Japan could claim asylum. That claim, along with increased claims from Hungary, represents, according to Kenney, an indication that Canada’s refugee and immigration system is broken.