Queers Against Israeli Apartheid Intends To March In Pride Toronto Parade Despite Warnings From City, Defense Secretary Robert Gates Warns Not To Repeal DADT Yet, Kentucky Judges Lessons Charges In Connection To Attempted Gay Bashing, Catholic Archbishop Wants Seton Hall Gay Marriage Class Cancelled, Remembering Harry Wieder

Organizers of the Toronto Pride said Thursday that it has yet to determine whether Queers Against Israeli Apartheid will be permitted to participate in the 2010 parade, despite warnings from the city that the group, which marched in 2009 with banners adorned with swastikas, violates the Toronto anti-discrimination policy, consequently, Toronto Pride stands to lose its future city funding. Mayor David Miller said that in order to qualify for grants, groups must adhere to Toronto policies. Last year, Pride received $120,000. “Pride is a celebration,” said Miller. “It is about freedom of expression and human rights, but it’s also a place where people have to respect other’s human rights. For example, if people have hate symbols, like swastikas, in the parade it would be up to Pride to make sure that those symbols aren’t used.” Although Pride officials say an application from QuAIA has yet to be received – the deadline to apply for a permit to the parade is June 4th – Jenny Peto, a spokesperson for QuAIA, said “we will march in Pride Toronto 2010 because we are proud of our politics and our solidarity with Palestinians, queer and straight.”

A report that American Defense Secretary Robert Gates has authored a letter to Congress warning not to change the military ban on gay men and women serving openly until he is able to draft a plan for repeal. Gates told a House committee Friday that forcing policy change on the military before it is prepared “would send a very damaging message to our men and women in uniform that in essence their views, concerns and perspectives do not matter.”

In McKee, Kentucky, Thursday, United States District Judge Henria Bailey-Lewis heard testimony from 18 year old Cheyenne Williams, alleging that Ashley Sams and Corinne Schwab, each 18 years old, threatened to push her off a cliff and hit her head with a rock. Both Sams and Schwab had been charged with felony counts of attempted murder and kidnapping, but the judge reduced the charges to fourth-degree assault and menacing, both misdemeanours. Williams contends she was the target of the attack because of her sexual orientation, but both girls, classmates of Williams, denied the allegations, insisting it was prank in which Williams willingly participated. A 17 year old girl, who cannot be named, is also charged in the attack. Despite the judge’s decision Thursday, Jordan Palmer, the president of the Kentucky Equality Federation, said he has requested the FBI investigate the case under the recently revised federal hate-crimes law. The case will be heard by a grand jury next week.

Because they have little else to concern themselves with, the Catholic Archbishop of Newark has requested that Seton Hall University’s governing board investigate a decision made by the administration to allow an academic class on gay marriage in the fall of 2010, the course offered by the department of Women and Gender studies, and designed to be a neutral examination of gay marriage from scholar perspective, not a platform to advocate either against or for same sex marriage. Seton Hall University is a private Catholic school.

A fond remembrance of Harry Wieder, the 57 year old native New Yorker killed tragically by a taxi earlier this week, Tuesday, leaving a community board meeting. Wieder was an advocate for gay rights, for affordable and safe public housing, for accessible and affordable health care, and access for the disabled. He was – and can personally attest to this – a true New Yorker in all the best possible ways. His accomplishments, which were many, were often, wrongly, overlooked because of the obvious and not so obvious hardships Harry endured. He was a dwarf, mostly deaf, and was a proud gay Jewish man, the only child of Holocaust survivors. At his funeral Friday, in Queens, his mother, Charlotte Wieder, 86 years old, who never went more than a week without seeing her son, said “in spite of my very strong feeling to protect him, I could not hold back his good.”