Dorena Kearney via PGN

    ::: The former director of a non-profit Philadelphia HIV/AIDS prevention group was sentenced yesterday to 12 months and a day in federal prison for stealing almost $139,000 from the organization she once led, COLOURS, Inc, Philadelphia Daily News reports. The group offers services to gay and lesbian residents of color. Dorena Kearney, 52, was indicted last year in April following a joint investigation by the City Inspector General’s Office and the FBI, after COLOURS officials discovered the misappropriation of funds, Philadelphia Gay News reports. Kearney pleaded guilty last June to one count of theft of federal program funds. From 2004 through 2007 Kearney opened four credit-card accounts in both her name and the name of COLOURS and used the agency’s funds to pay for personal expenses, including plastic surgery, clothing, dog grooming, and a cruise, according to PGN. “Kearney’s crime is especially egregious because she stole public money that citizens and elected officials of Philadelphia had dedicated to some of its most disenfranchised and those hardest hit by the AIDS epidemic,” said the Chief Inspector Amy Kurland during the hearing. Kearney was also ordered to repay the $138,768 to the city.

    ::: The federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) will hold public hearings next month in San Francisco, Chicago, and New York City to gather input as the agency prepares a national survey examining barriers to members of the LGBT community in the renting and sale of housing. “This really is groundbreaking,” said Raphael Bostic, HUD's assistant secretary for policy development and research, who's overseeing the study. “Nothing like this has ever been tried before at this scale and certainly not by a federal agency,” he told Washington Post. Prior studies of race-based housing discrimination have gauged how landlords and real estate agents treated people of color compared with whites. The hearings next month seek help in creating survey methods that can best determine the extent of discrimination faced by LGBT people, BusinessWeek reports. “We really want to hear from people who are living and experiencing these issues so we make sure we understand what’s really playing out in the field,” Bostic told Bay Area Reporter. He said he’s not yet sure how or when the study will be conducted, but he’s hopeful results will start becoming available by early 2011. “It will finally give us the hard data to back up the heartbreaking stories of discrimination we’ve been hearing for years,” Rea Carey executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, told Associated Press.

Flickr photo-illustration by d_rod

   ::: A second gay couple in Argentina was given approval by a judge on Tuesday to be married at a civil registry in Buenos Aires, AFP reports. The two men whose names were not released would be the second gay couple to marry in the country. In granting approval for the marriage Judge Elena Liberatori said the couple is exercising their rights even if current laws “are not in line with the times”. In December, Jose Maria Di Bello and Alex Freyre became the first gay couple to marry in Latin America.  Even though one judge initially gave Di Bello and Freyre permission to marry in Buenos Aires, another judge blocked their planned wedding, forcing them to travel to the southern state of Tierra del Fuego state where sympathetic officials allowed them to marry. A marriage equality law is expected to take effect next month in Mexico City, but marriage equality is not formally recognized elsewhere in Latin America.

    ::: Maryland law allows for recognition of marriage licenses granted to gay or lesbian couples by other states or countries, the state’s attorney general ruled today, DC Agenda reports. The long-awaited opinion by Attorney General Doug Gansler does not automatically grant recognition to married same-sex couples, but clears the way for the legislature to pass a law recognizing the marriages. The opinion was issued in response to a formal request from Montgomery County Democratic Senator Richard Madaleno, an out gay legislator who has proposed a measure to allow same sex marriage ceremonies to be performed in Maryland, WBAL reports. “It’s reaffirmation of what we thought, that Maryland can recognize gay marriage,” Madaleno said, according to Washington Post. In the 45 page opinion, Gansler notes a court could order recognition of marriages or state agencies could issue rules recognizing the marriages “on particular matters within that agency’s jurisdiction”. He called the opinion “a prediction, not a prescription” as to how a court would interpret the law, Baltimore Sun reports. Madeleno told reporters today that a change in the state’s rules does not appear to be imminent. The lower house of Maryland’s legislature earlier this year rejected a The House earlier this year rejected a bill that would have preempted Gansler's opinion by barring the state from recognizing same-sex marriages, the Sun reports. Del. Emmett Burns, the legislator who sponsored that measure, called the Gansler’s opinion a “political” ruling that “doesn’t clarify anything”.

WV capitol building, Charleston Flickr photo by J. Stephen Conn

    ::: Hoping to force debate on several of their social-conservative bills including a proposed constitutional amendment to define marriage as a special right for heterosexual couples, Republicans in the West Virginia House of Delegates vowed Monday to use procedural moves to bring up the measures, Charleston (WV) Gazette reports. “The people of West Virginia want these bills discussed, and debated on the floor,” House Minority Leader Tim Armstead, R-Kanawha, told reporters Monday. Democrats have a 71-29 majority in the chamber, and have so far refused to bring the GOP-backed measures up for floor debate. “The Republicans only seem to want to score election year points by trying to force debates and votes on issues like gay marriage,” State Democratic Party Chairman Nick Casey said in a Friday news release. State law already limits marriage to opposite-sex couples, he pointed out.

    ::: US Sen. Joe Lieberman, the independent from Connecticut who caucuses with Democrats, will announce this week that he will become the prime senate sponsor of a bill to repeal the military’s ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy, columnist James Kirchik reports in New York Daily News. Lieberman said he will work on repeal “as hard as I have on anything that's been important to me as a senator.” He is quoted by Kirchik saying that repeal of the law would fulfill the bedrock American promise of providing citizens with “an equal opportunity to do whatever job their talents and sense of purpose and motivations lead them to want to do—including military service.” But Lieberman, a foreign policy hawk who strongly supported Republican John McCain in the 2008 presidential campaign, said repeal of the policy would also benefit national security. “When you artificially limit the pool of people who can enlist then you are diminishing military effectiveness,” he told Kirchik. Lieberman dismissed arguments that allowing gay men and lesbians to serve openly would hurt unit cohesiveness. He said the argument, which has been offered by McCain and others, belittles the maturity of US soldiers. Alex Nicholson, executive director of Servicemembers United, called Lieberman’s sponsorship an “historic step” in efforts to repeal the policy, DC Agenda reports.