By Ramy Eletreby

Oklahoma Baptist Pastor Arrested for Lewd Conduct

A Tulsa, Okla., Southern Baptist pastor was arrested Jan. 3 on lewd conduct charges after propositioning a male plainclothes police officer, Advocate.com said based on Associated Press reports. Lonnie Latham, senior pastor at South Tulsa Baptist Church and an executive committee member of the Southern Baptist Convention, was taken to Oklahoma County Jail after offering to perform an act of lewdness, said police Capt. Jeffrey Becker. The pastor was released on $500 bail after being booked on the misdemeanor charge which carries a $2,500 fine and possibly one year in jail.

Latham opposes same-sex marriage and supports a Convention directive that urges the denomination's 42,000 churches to befriend gay people and promote the idea that gays can change into heterosexuals "if they accept Jesus Christ as their savior and reject their sinful, destructive lifestyle," AP reported.

Latham was arrested in a hotel parking lot after allegedly asking the police officer to go to a hotel room for oral sex. The lot has been the site of public complaints about male prostitutes flagging down cars, Becker told AP. Calls by AP to Latham at his church were not immediately returned Jan. 4.

NYC Gets First Female and Gay Council Speaker

On Jan. 4, Christine Quinn (D-Manhattan) became the first female and the first openly gay person to earn the position of Council Speaker in New York City since the position was first created back in 1989. The Council Speaker is considered to be the second most powerful and visible position in city government, behind Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and serves as the face of the 51-member City Council.

National Black Justice Coalition Calls for Church Summit on Gay Rights

On Jan. 20 and 21, the National Black Justice Coalition (NBJC) will hold a summit in Atlanta, Ga., in which black faith leaders will come together to have a discussion on gay rights, with a focus on homophobia and exclusionary divisiveness.

"These high-level discussions are about developing specific strategies that will challenge homophobic attitudes in our nation's black religious institutions -- from the seminary to the pulpit," said Dr. Sylvia Rhue, NBJC director of Religious Affairs and Constituency Development. "Through enlivened and educated discussions about the lives of black gay families, we hope to help [our communities of faith] grapple with issues of sexual orientation and the Bible."

Rev. Al Sharpton and Bishop Dr. Yvette Flunder will be keynote speakers and Rev. Willie Wilson, Rev. Jesse Jackson, and Rev. Peter Gomes have been invited to attend.

Rhode Island Becomes 11th State to Legalize Medical Marijuana

On Jan. 3, Rhode Island became the 11th state to make medical marijuana legal after the state's House of Representatives voted to override Gov. Donald Carcieri's veto of the Marijuana Policy Project-sponsored medical marijuana bill. This is the first decision on medical marijuana since the U.S. Supreme Court's Gonzales v. Raich decision in June, which ruled that Congress may ban the use of marijuana even where states approve its use for medicinal purposes. Rhode Island's medical marijuana decision is the third passed by a state's legislature and the first to be made by overriding a governor's veto. The eight other states' marijuana laws were passed through ballot initiatives. The Rhode Island Medical Society, the Rhode Island Nurses Association, and AIDS Project Rhode Island are among the groups who lobbied for the bill to be passed.

Several other states are showing support for medical marijuana legislation, with a similar ruling expected to pass in New Mexico and recent bills introduced in Michigan and Wisconsin, plus several advocates for legislation in Illinois, Minnesota, and New York.

New York Jail Unit for Gay and Transgender Inmates to Close

The housing unit for gay and transgender inmates on Riker's Island in New York is expected to officially close some time over the next few weeks, according to The New York Times. At the direction of Department of Correction Commissioner Martin Horn, the department stopped admitting new inmates on Nov. 28, though it had space to admit 20 more prisoners until it reached its limit of 146. Correction Department spokesman Tom Antenen cited the closing as part of a larger restructuring of the jail's prisoner classification system.

The special housing unit on the island's prison complex first opened in the late 1970s to provide protection for gay and transgender inmates who might otherwise be targets of discrimination and abuse among the general inmate population. After the unit closes, inmates who seek protection from the general population must apply for it via a special hearing, which would result in being placed in an individual cell for 23 hours a day. Several gay groups and advocates have expressed outrage over this possibility citing the forced isolation as a severe alternative to being abused. The groups, including Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, the New York Civil Liberties Union and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, have asked Horn to reconsider his decision.

Famed Anti-Gay Psychiatrist Socarides Dies

On Dec. 25, Charles William Socarides, the influential and infamous psychiatrist who made a career out of offering "conversion therapy" to gays, died of heart failure at the age of 83. Though the American Psychiatric Association concluded that homosexuality was not a mental illness in 1973, Socarides continued to believe that it was a condition that could be combated through treatment. A clinical professor of psychiatry at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Socarides wrote a half-dozen books on the subject of homosexuality, including 1968's The Overt Homosexual, which made him the enemy of several gay rights groups. In 1992, Socarides co-founded the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality. According to the Web site, the organization's mission is "to make effective psychological therapy available to all homosexual men and women who seek change."

In his 1995 book, Homosexuality: A Freedom Too Far, Socarides writes that the gay rights movement "takes deadly aim on the primary unit in society, the family. Second, it is eliminating one of the very obvious but very key factors in the making of a civilization: the fact that one generation succeeds another generation. Third, the very fact of AIDS is the same-sex movement's terrifying contribution to this terrific century." In his practice, Socarides claimed to have cured thousands of patients.

"Socarides outlived his time," anthropologist Gilbert Herdt, director of the National Sexuality Resource Center, told The New York Times. "He became a kind of anachronism, and a tragic one in the sense that he continued to inflict suffering on the lives of some gay and lesbian individuals and the LGBT community in general."

Ironically, Socarides' son, Richard, is an openly gay activist who served as special assistant to President Clinton and White House liaison to the gay community. Richard Socarides told The New York Times that he and his father were able to keep their relationship by not discussing their work. "It was complex," he told the Times. "We tried to relate to each other as father and son."

Massachusetts Gay Marriage Supporters File Lawsuit Regarding Ballot Initiative

On Jan. 3, the Gay and Lesbian Advocates & Defenders (GLAD) filed a lawsuit in Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court against Attorney General Thomas F. Reilly for his ruling in favor of a ballot initiative seeking to ban gay marriage in 2008. According to the Boston Globe, GLAD claims that since the state court legalized gay marriage in November 2003, the current ballot initiative violates a provision in the state constitution that prohibits ballot measures that seek to reverse a judicial decision.

Supporters of the Massachusetts Family Institute-sponsored initiative insist that the proposed amendment is well within the parameters of the constitution because it will not overturn the judicial decision and thus, invalidate marriages performed since November 2003. Rather, the initiative would stop any more marriages from occurring, according to the Globe. The PlanetOut Network reports that since Reilly's ruling, the initiative received 123,356 signatures, although only 65,000 were needed to place it on the 2008 ballot.