Elizabeth Taylor Laid To Rest, Westboro Baptist Church Protest Fails To Materialize, American Civil Liberties Union Intervenes After Louisiana School Sends Student Home For Wearing Pro-Gay Tee Shirt, Brother Of Man Stoned To Death Says Murray Seidman Was Not Gay, Madonna’s Malawi Charitable Foundation Collapses Amidst Mismanagement Crisis, Zachary Quinto Sighting

The Los Angeles Times reports that despite threats from the Westboro Baptist Church, the funeral service for Elizabeth Taylor proceeded as planned Thursday afternoon at Forest Lawn Memorial-Park in Glendale. Taylor’s family arrived in five black stretch limousines about 2:10 pm Thursday, and left within a couple of hours through the wrought-iron gates. Despite the camera crews lined up outside and the helicopter that hovered overhead, it was a peaceful and quiet event. Even those who gathered seemed to mostly be connected to the elementary school letting out nearby. The speed of the service surprised some -– and without many details publicly available, huge crowds never arrived. Taylor, who died of congestive heart failure Wednesday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center at the age of 79, converted to Judaism in the 1950s, and Jewish tradition calls for a burial as soon as possible, preferably within 24 hours, after a person's death. Glendale Police Department officials said the department was asked to assist in security for the three dozen to four dozen family members and friends expected to attend the service because of the proximity of an elementary school. No details were given to the media about who attended the service. The rabidly anti-gay WBC said it intended to picket the service because of Taylor’s historic commitment in raising money for the treatment and prevention of HIV/AIDS, but, predictably, never materialized. Taylor was buried near her good friend Michael Jackson, in separate wings of the mausoleum, said Glendale Police Department spokesman Tom Lorenz, who added "There's nowhere in the world where more famous people are laid to rest."

The Associated Press reports that the Louisiana chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union ACLU sent a letter to the principal of a DeSoto Parish middle school after he sent a student home because a tee shirt she wore had a gay-friendly message. Dawn Henderson wore a shirt to school with the message Some Kids are Gay. That’s OK. According to a Tuesday news release from the ACLU, principal Keith Simmons ordered her to change her shirt or leave school. The ACLU’s letter to Simmons says students have a First Amendment right to express their opinions, including on tee shirts, as long as the school allows clothing with slogans. Simmons did not immediately return a call for comment. The ACLU release, however, says school officials said the slogan was "distracting," although no incident of disruption was attributed to it.

69 year old Lenny Seidman tells NBC Philadelphia that his older brother’s murder, Murray Seidman was not a gay bashing and that suspect John Joe Thomas’ claims that he stoned Murray Seidman to death because of sexual advances toward the younger man is a dramatic ruse to hide Thomas’ real motive - money. “To me, [Thomas] is cleverly framing his defence,” says Lenny Seidman. “[Thomas was] a manipulative coward who wanted to cash in on Murray's retirement funds.” Lenny Seidman was stunned not only by his brother’s brutal murder in January, in which the 28 year old Thomas allegedly beat the mentally-challenged 70 year old to death with a sock full of rocks, but also by Thomas’ confession to police that he killed Murray because he read in the Old Testament that gays must be stoned to death.“The story is [that a] predator murdered a vulnerable and mentally-challenged person out of greed,” Lenny says. “I have many gay friends; Murray wasn’t gay. If anything, my brother was asexual. He didn’t have the capacity to have deep feelings in a sexual way.” What Murray did have capacity for was positivity and empathy, says Lenny. In his 40 years of working in the linens department at Fitzgerald Mercy Hospital in Lansdowne, Murray was well known and loved by his work community for being able to uplift people’s spirits, and, according to Lenny, the hospital is where his brother met the man now accused of his murder. Lenny says that Thomas was a patient in the psychiatric ward at Fitzgerald Mercy when Murray met him in 2009. Police found Murray’s body January 12th, 2011, several days after he was murdered. Thomas told police that he returned to Seidman’s apartment days later to make it appear like he just discovered the body. Thomas is being held on murder charges without bail, and a preliminary hearing had been scheduled for Thursday.

The New York Times reports that a high-profile charitable foundation set up to build a school for impoverished girls in Malawi, founded by Madonna and fellow devotees of a Kabbalah, a prominent Jewish mysticism movement, has collapsed after spending $3.8 million on a project that never came to materialized. The board of directors of the organization, Raising Malawi, has been ousted and replaced by a caretaker board, including Madonna and her manager, officials with the organization said Thursday. Its executive director, who is the boyfriend of Madonna’s former trainer, Tracy Anderson, left in October amid criticism of his management style and cost overruns for the school. These included what auditors described as outlandish expenditures on salaries, cars, office space and a golf course membership, free housing and a car and driver for the school’s director. Plans to build a $15 million school for about 400 girls in the poor south-eastern African country of 15 million, which had drawn financial support from Hollywood and society circles, as well as the Los Angeles-based Kabbalah Centre International, an organization devoted to Jewish mysticism, have been officially abandoned. “A thoughtful decision has been made to discontinue plans for the Raising Malawi Academy for Girls, as it was originally conceived,” Michael Berg, a co-director of the Kabbalah Centre and the co-founder of Raising Malawi, said Thursday in an e-mail to the center’s members who had contributed to the project. The e-mail announced the replacement of the board of directors. On Thursday, Madonna also issued a statement saying she was still intent on using the organization, which has raised $18 million so far, to advance improvements in the beleaguered nation. “There’s a real education crisis in Malawi,” she said. “Sixty-seven percent of girls don’t go to secondary school, and this is simply unacceptable. Our team is going to work hard to address this in every way we can.” She and her aides offered no explanation of why, given her high interest in the project, she had not noticed the problems as they began unfolding.

An oh-so-cute Zachary Quinto spotted Wednesday in Los Angeles lunching with a friend, Quinto having announced he will be helming a documentary on his friend, photographer Tyler Shields.