CHICAGO (AP) —A suburban school superintendent says he was only trying to be funny when he took videotaped interviews with his new teachers, spliced in his own gag questions and made the faculty members look like killers, strippers and drug users. Now he could lose his job. “How do you like to unwind?” Bremen High School District Superintendent Rich Mitchell asks in the mock documentary that he later posted on the internet. The tape cuts to a teacher who replies: “I enjoy a lot of leisure activities.” “Such as?” Mitchell asks. “Killing,” says the teacher. Mitchell has been suspended with pay pending a dismissal hearing. School board president Evelyn Gleason said Mitchell could be fired over the stunt, though she said the seven-member board will first have to conduct an investigation. Mitchell said the school board was trying to push him out because he is gay. His attorney, Jim Madigan of Lambda Legal, said he plans to file a sexual orientation discrimination charge with the Illinois Department of Human Rights.

Gay teen struggles to start
club at N.C. high school

MOYOCK, N.C. (AP) — Danielle Smiley envisions a high school club that raises awareness and brings together gay and straight students. But forming such a club at Currituck County High School has been anything but smooth. Local pastors and parents have denounced the proposal. They’ve said the club could help spread AIDS, encourage children to engage in sex and persuade others to become homosexual. Smiley began thinking about putting together the club after being harassed at school, which has included students putting chewing gum on the lock on her locker and teachers forcing her to tell her parents about her sexual orientation, she said. The school board is considering Smiley’s request to form a chapter of the Gay-Straight Alliance at the high school.

Mass. Episcopal diocese considers
a halt to performing marriages

BOSTON (AP) — The Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts is scheduled to vote later this month on a resolution to stop performing marriages. A group of Episcopal priests, who say the gay marriage debate has intensified concerns about acting as agents of the state by officiating at weddings, has proposed the idea. “I feel this is a way to equalize an inequity in what Episcopal clergy can do for gay folks and straight folks,” Rev. Margaret (Mally) E. Lloyd told the Boston Globe. Lloyd is rector of Christ Church in Plymouth and one of five Episcopal priests sponsoring the resolution. “Right now, we can only offer blessings for gay folks who are married, and it’s not fair,” she said. The resolution would declare the convention’s desire that Episcopal marriages be presided over by an agent of the state — such as a justice of the peace — beginning in 2008.

N.Y. to ease rules for changing
gender on birth certificates

NEW YORK (AP) — The city wants to make it easier for transgender New Yorkers to switch the sex listed on their birth certificate, an important issue to trans rights activists in an era when official identity documents have become more essential in everyday life. Under present city rules, only people who can show proof of a surgery qualify for getting a revised birth certificate. Even then, the only change made is the elimination of any reference to gender on the document. The new plan, unveiled late last month, would let birth records reflect the new gender for the first time. It would also allow changes for people who hadn’t had genital surgery, but could show substantial proof that they have undertaken other steps to irrevocably alter their gender identity — like undergoing hormone therapy. All but three states now allow people who have had a sex change to get a new birth certificate.

2nd grade teacher comes out
to students, upsetting parents

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Several parents of students at a downtown Minneapolis school are protesting a second-grade teacher’s decision to tell his class he’s gay as part of a discussion of diversity, without first notifying them. The parents and about a dozen supporters held a protest Friday at the Interdisciplinary Downtown School, which serves students from 10 Twin Cities-area districts. They want the school to let their children switch to a different class, a request that principal Laura ...