Saskatchewan Police Reopen 2007 Attack On British Columbia Gay Man Left Quadriplegic After He Comes Forward With New Information, Washington State Senate Now Two Votes Short Of Passing Same Sex Marriage Measure, New Jersey Governor Christie Same Sex Marriage Manoeuver, Army Investigating Officer Recommends Pfc. Bradley Manning Face Court Martial, Transphobic Tennessee Bill Pulled, James Franco To Play Robert Mapplethorpe, Stephen Colletti, Joey Essex

A British Columbia man has come forward with new information about an attack he endured five years ago while working in Saskatoon. Conner Copeman, who was 18 at the time, said he remembers he was attacked by at least three men. He was found on a Buena Vista neighbourhood sidewalk suffering from serious injuries on July 11, 2007. A passerby found Copeman at the corner of Eastlake Avenue and Fifth Street shortly before 6:30 am. Copeman says he was attacked because of his sexual orientation. "I was just testing the water at the time and being flirtatious with a group of guys," he said. "But I misread them." The Star-Phoenix reports that Copeman, 22, is now a quadriplegic as a result of the beating. He lives in Cumberland, British Columbia, and was recently elected as a village councillor in the small community. At the time, police were unsure how Copeman ended up at that intersection. Neighbours reported hearing a disturbance in the area, and the initial investigation revealed Copeman was with a group of people at Buena Vista Park before police found him. Police are not revealing what the new information is, but the fresh details came from the victim, who was in Saskatoon this week and met with police. "Based on that interview, investigators decided to take another look at the case," said police spokesperson Alyson Edwards. The initial investigation was difficult because the victim, due to his injuries, couldn't recall some details of the attack, she added. Copeman underwent surgery shortly after the assault to remove a shattered C5 vertebrae in his neck. Before the attack, Copeman had been living in Saskatoon for only three weeks after moving from his B.C. home. "We're still hoping people may have information about that night that can still be useful," Edwards said.

The Washington state Senate is now just two votes shy of having enough support to pass same sex marriage, as an undecided Democrat said Friday she is now committing her vote to approve it. Democratic Senator Rosemary McAuliffe of Bothell said that the legislation is "long overdue." She had said earlier in the week that she was leaning in favour of support but was unwilling to commit to it. "Now is the time to support marriage for all families," McAuliffe said. She said an overwhelming number of her constituents have encouraged her to support the same sex marriage legislation. Her decision means the Senate now has 23 solid votes to pass the measure, according to a tally of votes over the past week by The Associated Press. A total of 25 votes are needed for passage. Eight senators remain uncommitted, including three conservative Democrats who say they are considering the issue. The House is widely expected to have enough support, and Governor Chris Gregoire is pushing the proposal. Same sex marriage is legal in six states.

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie isn’t saying what he will do with a same sex marriage bill, which Democratic lawmakers consider a major priority of the new session. “They have a right to set their agenda, I’ll set mine, we’ll see who gets there first,” he said today in Camden . “When forced to make a decision, if forced to make a decision on it, I’ll make a decision.” The Star-Ledger reports that in the past, Christie has said he favours the state’s civil unions law that was adopted in 2003. Legislative leadership said this week that they planned to make the bill a priority in the new session. The announcement puts Senate President Stephen Sweeney and his fellow Democrats on the offensive and again forces Christie to take a stand on a delicate political issue. Sweeney (D-Gloucester) abstained when a same sex marriage bill came before the Legislature two years ago, helping the measure go down to defeat in the final days in office for Governor Jon Corzine, who had pledged to sign the measure if it passed. At the time, Christie said he did not support gay marriage. Months ago, Sweeney, a Catholic, said he was wrong not to support the bill, which he said he erroneously considered a religious issue, not a matter of civil rights, as he now views it. But Sweeney and Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver (D-Essex) said they now have the votes to get the measure passed in their respective chambers and will work to get the required two-thirds of the Senate vote to override an anticipated veto by Christie. State Senator Loretta Weinberg (D-Bergen), who co-sponsored the measure in 2010 with state Sen. Raymond Lesniak (D-Union), said the latest effort already has bipartisan support. Sweeney, who has announced that he plans to form an exploratory committee to look at a possible run for U.S. Senate in 2014, said the bill would go to the appropriate committees "immediately" and that he wanted a vote in the Senate before the budget break in March. In January of 2010, the Senate defeated a gay marriage bill by a 20-14 vote. Six Democratic senators voted against the bill and three others abstained on the measure, it got support from just one Republican senator, Bill Baroni, a Mercer County lawmaker who was later tapped by Christie to help run the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. By his own count, Sweeney says he has 22 votes. It’s unclear if Sweeney is correct because many senators have not returned phone calls seeking their position on the issue. State Senator James Beach (D-Camden), part of the South Jersey delegation headed by Sweeney, abstained from the vote last time but now says he will support the measure. State Senator Paul Sarlo (D-Bergen) abstained from voting last time around and is now signalling that he will support the bill. “My position is evolving,” said Sarlo. “Supporters of gay marriage know where I stand.” State Senator Nicholas Sacco (D-Hudson) was one of six Democratic senators to oppose the bill. His spokesman, Paul Swibinski, said the senator “has always held a traditional view of marriage, but he is also very aware of how important this issue is to so many people.” Swibinski added that Sacco “will make his decision at the appropriate time.” Jennifer Beck is the lone Republican senator to publically support the bill thus far. She voted against the bill in 2010 because, she says, of the rushed process and not on its merits. “I believe that the civil union law would deliver equal rights, and we know with certainty that it’s not the case,” said Beck (R-Monmouth). Baroni, the lone GOP senator to support the bill last time, was replaced by State Senator Linda Greenstein, who has not returned phone calls seeking comment. One person who says they are not going to change their vote is State Senator Jeff Van Drew (D-Cape May), who opposed the bill. He said he supports strengthening the civil union law, but stops short of wanting to call it marriage.” “I deeply respect the civil liberties and rights of all New Jerseyeans, but I also believe that marriage over the centuries has been unique between a man and a woman,” said Van Drew. “I am willing to work diligently to make civil unions contractually and legally more effective, but I will not be voting for marriage equality.” Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver (D-Essex) believes she has the votes to pass the bill in the lower chambers. “Though I also understand this is going to be an emotional debate, I’m confident the majority of the Assembly supports this equal rights issue,” said Oliver. “The Assembly is ready to stand for what’s right and to stand for equality.”

An Army investigating officer recommended Thursday that accused leaker Pfc. Bradley Manning face a court-martial for his alleged role in providing massive amounts of classified information to anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks. According to The Washington Post, the ruling came after a preliminary hearing last month in which prosecutors presented evidence appearing to link Manning with the security breach, including chat logs between him and WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange. Manning faces 22 counts, including aiding the enemy, and could face life in prison if convicted. The investigating officer, Lt. Col. Paul Almanza, found that the charges presented at the preliminary hearing offered reasonable evidence that Manning had committed the offenses alleged. Manning, 24, worked as an intelligence analyst in Baghdad and was detained in May 2010 and charged that July. Manning is accused of leaking hundreds of thousands of documents to WikiLeaks. They include State Department cables, daily field reports from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, detainee assessments from Guantanamo Bay, and a 2007 Army video of an Apache helicopter firing on civilians. Manning, a native of Crescent, Oklahoma, was stationed at Forward Operating Base Hammer near Baghdad in November 2009. Manning first contacted Assange the same month he deployed to Baghdad. Investigators recovered a memory card from Manning’s aunt’s home in Potomac, Maryland, that contained Afghanistan and Iraq field reports. He had left the card there in January 2010 during home leave. In the preliminary hearing, more than 20 of Manning’s associates testified about his mental state, work product and training. The prosecution presented evidence showing that Manning had been well trained on the handling of classified information and would have been aware of the military regulations restricting the dissemination of classified documents. Defense attorney David Coombs argued that Manning’s superiors should have recognized signs that he was mentally unstable and stripped him of his access to classified information. He also argued that the military had overcharged Manning and made a plea to reduce the charges from 22 to three. Coombs did not reply to requests for comment on Thursday. Another military body, called a convening authority, will make the final decision of whether to refer the case to general court-martial.

Senator Bo Watson (R-Hixson), on Thursday withdrew the Senate version of a controversial House measure requiring transgender people to use public bathrooms and dressing rooms that match their birth gender. The Chattanooga Times Free Press reports that Watson, who is chairman of the Hamilton County legislative delegation, said he sponsored the bill as a standard courtesy to local House members. This bill was sponsored by Representative Richard Floyd, R-Chattanooga. “I understand Rep. Floyd’s passion about the issue, but we have more pressing issues before us that we need to focus our attention on and we don’t need to get sidetracked,” Watson said. Floyd said earlier Thursday he introduced the bill after reading a news story about a Texas woman who said she was fired from Macy’s after stopping a male teen dressed as a woman from using a dressing room. “It could happen here,” Floyd said. “I believe if I was standing at a dressing room and my wife or one of my daughters was in the dressing room and a man tried to go in there — I don’t care if he thinks he’s a woman and tries on clothes with them in there — I’d just try to stomp a mudhole in him and then stomp him dry. Don’t ask me to adjust to their perverted way of thinking and put my family at risk. We cannot continue to let these people dominate how society acts and reacts. Now if somebody thinks he’s a woman and he’s a man and wants to try on women’s clothes, let him take them into the men’s bathroom or dressing room.” The bill would charge violators with a misdemeanour carrying a $50 fine. The bill drew swift condemnation on gay and liberal blogs. Jonathan Cole of the Tennessee Equality Project dubbed it the “Police the Potty” bill, noting that state law already prohibits Tennessee natives from amending their gender on birth certificates, even after undergoing medical procedures to change gender. Cole called the legislation “one of the most vicious attack bills ever filed against transgender people in state government.”

A biopic of Robert Mapplethorpe to star James Franco is one of 11 films that have been awarded a prestigious grant toward its production by the Tribeca Film Institute’s ninth Tribeca All Access Programme. Worth $15,000 each, the Tribeca grants have been given to six fiction movies and five documentaries. One from each category will be awarded a further $10,000 during the Tribeca festival in April. Mapplethorpe will follow the photographer’s life from his rise in the 1970s until his death at age 42 in 1989 from complications arising from AIDS. Mapplethorpe was as famous for his calmly explicit homoerotic nude males and provocative depictions of sadomasochistic sex as for his stark black-and-white portraits of such celebrities as Deborah Harry, Andy Warhol, Isabella Rossellini, William Burroughs, Grace Jones, and his onetime soul mate Patti Smith. ART Info reports that the film is being produced by director Ondi Timoner’s Interloper Films and the actress-producer Eliza Dushku’s Boston Diva Productions. It was Dushku who in 2009 secured the rights and full cooperation from the Mapplethorpe estate to make the film. “The Mapplethorpe Foundation was impressed by Ondi Timoner’s vision for the project and her strengths as an artist,” Michael Ward Stout, president of the foundation, said at the time. Back then the film was titled The Perfect Moment after Mapplethorpe’s traveling 1989 solo exhibit, which became a cause célèbre in the censorship wars over public funding for art. Playing Mapplethorpe will lend some thematic consistency to Franco’s career as an actor. His decisions to play Harvey Milk’s boyfriend Scott Smith in Milk (2008), Allen Ginsberg during the 1957 obscenity trial over his eponymous poem in Howl (2010), and now Mapplethorpe probably has less to do with any interest he has in playing gay men than in portraying figures whose rights and freedoms were threatened by self-appointed moral guardians. They’re also too interesting and iconic roles for any ambitious actor in his early thirties to turn down. Mapplethorpe will be the first fiction film to be directed by Timoner, who is the only filmmaker to have twice won the Sundance festival Grand Jury Prize for Documentary Film. In 2004 she won it for Dig!, which tracked the love-hate relationship of the alternative bands the Dandy Warhols and the Brian Jonestown Massacre over the course of seven years. She won it again for 2009’s We Live in Public, a study of the dotcom billionaire Josh Harris, whose radical experiments in Big Brotherdom led to his breakdown following a spell in which he imposed 24-hour Internet surveillance upon himself and his then girlfriend. Timoner has also made films about an African-American woman trapped in the prison system, cults and mind control, climate change, and the discovery of thousands of copper tins containing unclaimed human remains at Oregon State Hospital. Hers isn’t the only Mapplethorpe film in the works. Patti Smith is currently adapting her bestselling book Just Kids with dramatist John Logan, who wrote the screenplays for The Aviator, Hugo, and the upcoming Lincoln. Smith’s tender memoir covers the period in the late 1960s when, as Janet Maslin wrote in her New York Times review, she and Mapplethorpe “were young, inseparable, perfectly bohemian and completely unknown.”

One Tree Hill’s Stephen Colletti, shirtless, and filling out white underwear rather nicely.

British television oddity Joey Essex, a 21-year-old star of TOWIE, leaves his home wearing only white tennis shoes and a red personalized onesie.