GXR GAY NEW

MEXICO CITY — Ricky Martin defended the right of pop stars to come out of the closet, saying he felt solidarity with Christian Chavez of Mexican band RBD, who recently said publicly that he is gay.

“Life is too short to live closed up, guarding what you say,” said Martin _ whose sexual orientation has been the subject of speculation _ in an interview with The Associated Press. Christian “has to be free in many aspects. I wish him much strength.”

Martin, who was named person of the year in 2006 by the Latin Recording Academy, has hits including “Livin’ la Vida Loca” and “Shake Your Bon-Bon.”

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ST. LOUIS — Olivia Nabulwala says her family in Uganda was so angry and ashamed to learn she was a lesbian that her relatives hurled insults at her, pummeled her and, finally, stripped her and held her down while a stranger raped her.

“I hated myself from that day,” she says in a sworn statement. “I disliked my family for subjecting me to such torture, and yet they felt this was a good punishment for me.”

Now, in a case that illuminates a relatively unexplored area of immigration law, the African immigrant is asking for asylum in the U.S. on the grounds she was persecuted over her sexual orientation. And a federal appeals court ruling last week in St. Louis has raised her hopes of success.

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Political uproar in the wake of a Church directive telling Catholic politicians to vote against gay rights legislation has promted new charges of church interference in domestic Italian affairs.

The directive came from the Italian Bishops Conference as politicians consider a law to give homosexual and heterosexual unmarried couples more rights.

Prime Minister Romano Prodi’s center-left coalition has tabled a bill in Parliament that guarantees rights to unmarried couples in such areas as inheritance and health care. Some opponents fear it could eventually lead to gay marriage in Italy.

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CHICAGO Kay Longcope, who founded the gay weekly Texas Triangle after retiring from The Boston Globe, died Thursday after a year-long battle with pancreatic cancer. She was 69.

The Austin-based Texas Triangle was the state’s first statewide gay paper, and was characterized by a seriousness of purpose. The paper, for instance, refused the sex ads that are the lifeblood of many gay-oriented newspapers.

Longcope’s death was reported in a Friday Austin (Texas) American-Statesman article by Miguel Liscano. Her survivors include her partner of 17 years, Barbara Wohlgemuth.

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An elderly man in Detroit whose death became a cause for gay rights advocates died of natural causes, not from being beaten, authorities said Wednesday. Police also said they intended to close the investigation into 72-year-old Andrew Anthos’ death.

”There’s no evidence that an assault occurred,” police spokesman James Tate told The Detroit News.

According to family members, Anthos said he was riding a city bus home from the library on February 13 when a young man asked him if he was gay and uttered a slur. Anthos said the man followed him off the bus and confronted him again. Anthos said he told the man he was gay as he went to help a friend whose wheelchair was stuck in a snowbank, according to his cousin, Athena Fedenis.

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Advocates of a defeated measure barring gays and unmarried couples from fostering or adopting children said today they may try to put the ban on the 2008 ballot. Arkansas Family Council director Jerry Cox says the group is considering trying to place the ban on the ballot as a constitutional amendment or an initiated act if the measure does not win approval in the session.

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Gay athletes have been a big topic of conversation for the past few months.

The political climate around the topic of gay athletes seems to be changing for the better and a national survey in the US conducted by Witeck-Combs Communications and Harris Interactive, seems to support that theory.

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As news emerged that a new “anti-gay