Profoundly Pro-Gay California Supreme Court Justice Surprise Retirement Announcement, Brazil Physicians Revise In Vitro Rules To Allow Same Sex Couples To Participate, GLAAD Petitions CNN To Avoid Asking Anti-Gay Industry As On-Air Guests, Johnny Weir Makes It Official, Adam Levine Gets Naked, Clay Aiken To Appear At Annual Broadway Backwards

Justice Carlos Moreno, the California Supreme Court’s sole Democratic nominee, and the author of some of the court’s most profound gay rights opinions, unexpectedly announced that he is retiring, the San Francisco Chronicle reporting that the 62 year old will leave the bench February 28th, less than four months after winning voter approval for a new 12-month term. Moreno said that family concerns, finances, and the election of former attorney general Jerry Brown as governor of California, were the factors that led to his decision. A spokesperson for Brown, who took office Monday, said that the new governor intends to name “a candidate who is equally knowledgeable, thoughtful and judicious.” Moreno, raised in East Los Angeles, was appointed to the court by Governor Gray Davis. Moreno said that the rulings he is proudest of include four decisions made in 2005 that upheld same-sex couple’s parental rights, including custody and child support, and the right of domestic partners to be free of discrimination by businesses. Moreno was also a part of the 4-3 majority in May, 2008 that declared the rights of gays and lesbians to marry in California, and later that year, in November, he was the lone dissenter in the court’s 6-1 decision that declared Proposition 8 (the gay marriage ban) a valid amendment to the state Constitution, Moreno at the time writing that the ruling “places at risk the state constitutional rights of all disfavoured minorities.”

The Associated Press reports that Brazil’s national association of physicians has approved in principle new rules for in vitro fertilisation that will allow same sex partners and single people to qualify for the process, a statement from the organisation reading in part that the revisions “was a demand of modern society.” The rules published Thursday replace guidelines that were in place for nearly twenty years.

Thursday, the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation initiated a petition against CNN, to try and persuade the cable news network producers not to book guest from what GLAAD deems the “anti-gay industry, the petition reading in part that for year, in an attempt to be balanced on gay issues, “CNN turned – as they often do – to the anti-gay industry to provide the counterpoint. Except that all too frequently, the network doesn’t book these people because they provide an actual expertise or experience on issues that impact LGBT people; their only qualification is that they are anti-gay.”

I not really certain that this qualifies as news, but Johnny Weir is gay, an excerpt from his memoir Welcome to My World appearing in People magazine this week confirming the obvious. According to the Associated Press, Weir writes “I’m not ashamed to be me. More than anyone else I know, I love my life and accept myself. What’s wrong with being unique? I am proud of everything that I am and will become,” Johnny adding, with an unfortunate choice of words, that being gay “is the smallest part of what makes me me.” He also offers an explanation, of sorts, as to why he refused till now to come out, writing that “All the gay websites couldn’t figure out why I was such a jerk that I wouldn’t talk about it. But pressure is the last thing that would make me want to ‘join’ a community ... The massive backlash against me in the gay media and community only me dig my ‘closeted’ heels in further.”

Adam Levin nearly naked appearing in British Cosmopolitan magazine for the Everyman Campaign to raise awareness of testicular cancer.

The annual Broadway Backwards concert, featuring men performing songs traditionally sung by women and women performing songs traditionally sung by men, will take place February 7th, in New York City, at the Longacre Theatre on West 48th Street, Playbill reporting that Clay Aiken, Alan Cumming, and Dennis O’Hare are among the performers scheduled to appear. The one-night only event benefits Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS and The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Community. The fundraiser, according to a press release, is the “only annual Broadway event custom-made for the gay and lesbian community, their friends and family and will feature some of Broadway’s biggest names singing songs originally written for the opposite gender: women singing songs written for men and men singing songs written for women. By keeping all of the lyrics intact, including the original pronouns, each song takes on an entirely new dimension, sometimes with hysterical results and sometimes with immensely touching results."