Gay News from London

The Roundup

Global: The world's leading drugmakers are racing to be the first to market with a new kind of pill that can block HIV before it enters human cells. If successful these CCR5 inhibitors should have fewer toxic side effects and offer hope to patients whose virus has developed resistance to existing antiretroviral medicines.

USA: We told you recently about a proposal in Virginia for "traditional marriage" license plates. The bill passed the House and was expected to have a difficult time in the Senate. The plug was finally pulled thanks to a threatened ACLU lawsuit (state-issued personalized license plates are public forums in which all viewpoints on a subject must be allowed.)

School officials in Spanish Fork, Utah, want to replace their psychology textbooks, but they can't find any they like. What they want is a book that doesn't mention gay people. We'd like to point out the URL for this article, which includes the string "TextbooksandHomos."

A billboard featuring an "ex-gay" man saying you can stop being gay using Christianity was vandalized in Texas. "Queer" and "fag" were spray-painted, with arrows helpfully pointing to the face of Mike Haley. Haley says the vandalism shows intolerance for the ex-gay point of view and might have been done by gay people rather than homophobes. Did we mention this is in Texas?

Texas college student Kevin Jones compares his desire to marry as a gay man to the public opinion campaign Prince Charles waged to get people to not care if he married Camilla Parker-Bowles.

A measure that would put the issue on South Dakota's 2006 fall ballot to prohibit same-sex marriage was considered briefly, but was set aside for a later vote after one of the sponsors said it needs more work.
Today's Roundup[Date: 17-Feb-05 ]