Prosecutors drop case against gay couple accused of trespassing on LDS property
Prosecutors won’t pursue a case against two men accused of trespassing on LDS Church property earlier this month. An LDS Church security guard detained a gay couple on Salt Lake City’s Main Street Plaza on July 9 after observing the pair “kissing and hugging,” according to a police report. Derek Jones and Matt Aune were cited for trespassing after refusing to leave. The incident led to two kiss-in protests against the church in Salt Lake City and one in San Diego. Aune has said the couple’s display of affection was modest, but officials with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which owns the plaza, released a statement that the two men were “much more involved” than a “simple kiss on the cheek.” It said the couple “engaged in passionate kissing, groping, profane and lewd language, and had obviously been using alcohol.” In a statement released Wednesday, Salt Lake City Prosecutor Sim Gill said the trespassing case against Jones and Aune has been dropped. Gill said despite that Main Street Plaza is owned by the church, there “continues to be a mistaken belief by many visitors that there is a public right of way.”
* Tags = gay men gay news lesbian news transgender bisexual
| Published by |
 |
Original source : http://gay_blog.blogspot.com/2009/07/prosecutors-d…
Gay incident reopens Salt Lake City’s Main Street plaza wounds
It’s the wound that won’t heal. The rift that won’t close. And earlier this month, two gay lovers’ purportedly innocuous late-night kiss — though LDS Church officials insist it was far more amorous than that — ripped it wide open. Utah’s simmering religious divide boiled over — once again — at the geographical and philosophical intersection of church and state: the Main Street Plaza in downtown Salt Lake City. “It is a scab that will continue to be peeled away — and may never heal,” says Dani Eyer, the former ACLU director who fought to preserve First Amendment rights on the plaza. Matt Aune and Derek Jones say they held hands, kissed and then squabbled with security guards on the LDS Church-owned square. Salt Lake City police issued a ticket for trespassing. In protest, supporters of the couple staged a “kiss-in” last Sunday outside the plaza and plan another such demonstration today. The LDS Church — a faith to which 60 percent of Utahns belong — defended its right to regulate “inappropriate behavior” on the plaza. “What we’re seeing now is a manifestation of what should have been obvious from the very beginning,” says former Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson. “This block of Main Street never should have been conveyed to the LDS Church. It was a recipe for ongoing resentments between the LDS Church and those who are not members.” The church bought the strip of Main — from North Temple to South Temple — in 1999 after then-Mayor Deedee Corradini and the City Council, with the only two non-LDS members dissenting, signed off on the $8.1 million deal. But the controversy burned for five more years as federal courts were asked to settle the prickly issue of whether the church could govern expression on the plaza and whether the city could retain a public right of way (as outlined in the original deal). “It was meant to be for everybody,” Eyer says. “Where people come and go their constitutional rights go with them.” After a 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in 2002, First Amendment activities returned to the plaza. But demonstrations by anti-Mormon protesters — including cries of “whore” and “harlot” hurled at newlywed brides — “sustained divisions” that “reached to the point of hatred” between Mormons and non-Mormons, Anderson says. In the end, he agreed to trade the public easement for cash and LDS land to build a west-side community center.
* Tags = gay men gay news lesbian news transgender bisexual
| Published by |
|
Original source : http://gay_blog.blogspot.com/2009/07/gay-incident-…
Gay Men Kissing Ousted From Chico’s Tacos in Texas
The Chico’s Tacos restaurant chain in El Paso Texas doesn’t like homosexuals eating their fast-food tacos and the police agree reasoning, that a business can refuse service to anyone it wants, despite the city’s anti-discrimination ordinance.
When two men briefly kissed at the popular taco chain, bigotry, homophobia and ignorance of the law came out in full force, beginning with the security guards’ hurling anti-gay slurs at the men and ending with the El Paso Police ordering the men to leave the restaurant or face a “homosexual conduct” citation.
The incident has garnered national attention and the taco chain faces a growing movement by gay rights activists to boycott the restaurant, with protests planned at the restaurant’s multiple El Paso locations.
See Gay Men Kissing Ousted From Chico’s Tacos: Cops Threaten …
ChattahBox
* Tags = gay men gay news lesbian news transgender bisexual
| Published by |
|
Original source : http://gay_blog.blogspot.com/2009/07/gay-men-kissi…
White Supremacist Opens Fire @ At Holocaust Museum In D.C.
A gunman NBC News describes as a White Supremacist exchanged fire with security guards inside the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum on Wednesday. U.S. Park Police Sgt. David Schlosser said the gunman walked into the museum with what he described as a “long gun.” The gunman and a security guard were shot. Both were taken to the hospital, but the extent of their injuries wasn’t immediately known. But of course the govenrment was wrong to warn us about right wing terrorists.
* Tags = gay men gay news lesbian news transgender bisexual
| Published by |
|
Original source : http://gay_blog.blogspot.com/2009/06/white-suprema…
