Adoption.com has some tough decisions to make. The Arizona-based online baby-selling site attempted to discriminate against California queer couple, Michael and Rich Butler (pictured with their new baby, Emily), claiming they could do so under Arizona's gay-protection free laws. A judge ruled last month, however, that if Adoption.com plans on doing business in California, they must comply with California anti-discrimination laws, which include the homos. The company apparently couldn't take the legislative heat, because they have settled the case. Under the terms of the settlement, according to San Francisco Chronicle, Adoption.com and its parent company, parentprofiles.com, must either stop working in California or stop discriminating. They cannot, however, do both:

Under the terms of a settlement announced today, ParentProfiles.com, a sister company to Adoption.com, cannot post profiles of California residents "unless the service is made equally available to all California residents qualified to adopt in California."

We think it's a great agreement for us because it really ends the discriminatory practice of Adoption.com in the state of California. We hope that they continue doing business in the state, but if they can't comply with the nondiscriminatory policy and they stop doing business in the state, it's still a victory for Californians. We're not allowing them to profit on the back of Californians.

If Nigeria can't play fair, they may not be able to play at all. The African nation, which has been mulling comprehensive homophobic laws, has applied to host The Commonwealth, also known as the Olympics for Britain and their 52-former colonies.

Glasgow, Scotland and Abuja, Nigeria lead the hosting competition, but some claim Nigeria's unjust laws violate the Games' philosophy. The Guardian's sportsman, Nicky Campbell, writes

I might best explain by adducing Article 2 of the Commonwealth Games Federation constitution, which earnestly promotes "gender equality and tolerance"; or Article 7, which says "there shall be no discrimination against any country or person on any grounds whatsoever including race, colour, gender, religion or politics". That is clear enough, then, and that is Abuja scuppered, then.

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Jeffrey Landrigan will die for the 1989 murder of Chester Dyer. Landrigan - who had just escaped prison, where he was serving time for another, unrelated murder -picked Dyer up off the street and went back to Dyer's apartment. Once there, Landrigan strangled Dyer to death.

After being arrested (again), Landrigan stood trial for Dyer's murder. During this trial, however, Landrigan stopped his lawyer from presenting potentially life-saving evidence. With nothing but damning testimony, the Judge sentenced Landrigan to death.

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All-female law firm Fetman, Garland & Associates, Ltd. certainly got their money's worth when they created this billboard. The Chicago-area firm has caused quite a fuss with their tacky display of traditional marriage's conventional crumbling.

Parnter Corri Fetman explains her firm's advertising aesthetic:

Law firm advertising is boring…Everything's always the same. It's lawyers in libraries with a suit on and the law books behind them. They don't say anything. What, I should hire you because you have a law degree? C'mon. So we wanted to try something different.

'Life's Short. Get a Divorce.' -- Chicago Billboard Turns Heads [ABC via Joe.My.God]

Michael Lucas certainly has cause to celebrate. The pouty-lipped porn mogul can continue distributing his porn epic, Michael Lucas' La Dolce Vita. You may recall International Media Films Inc. filed a lawsuit claiming Lucas' skin flick encroached on Federico Fellini's similarly named classic.

On Friday, a judge ruled in favor of Lucas, saying that [it] seems extremely unlikely that a hapless purchaser seeking to buy Fellini’s film will inadvertently stumble across ‘Michael Lucas’s La Dolce Vita.’ Reacting to the verdict, Lucas told Wall Street Journal's law blog,

From the beginning, this case has been more about anti-gay and anti-sex prejudice than about well-founded legal claims. I am thrilled about this ruling and I hope we can now get this whole unnecessary distraction behind us.

35-year old Lucas has also been celebrating his new column in The New York Blade. This week, Russian born Lucas spilled some ink on his favorite subject, "anti-semitism" in the gay community. Lucas opens by wondering why so many gays support Muslim causes:

I’m disturbed that the world gay community is increasingly anti-Israel... How can gay people side with the Muslims who want to kill the Israelis?

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Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby may have a shit storm on his hands. The outspoken journo has penned a column entitled "Lawful Incest May Be On Its Way," in which Jacoby argues that Lawrence v. Texas - the groundbreaking case that people have the right to consensual sex, even sex of the anal variety - may have laid the groundwork for broader sex laws.

Jacoby - who looks like the poster boy for incest - writes:

In Lawrence, it is worth remembering, the Supreme Court didn't just invalidate all state laws making homosexual sodomy a crime. It also overruled its own decision just 17 years earlier (Bowers v. Hardwick, 1986) upholding such laws. If the court meant what it said in Lawrence -- that states are barred from "making . . . private sexual conduct a crime" -- it will not take that long for laws criminalizing incest to go by the board as well. Impossible? That's what they used to say about normalizing homosexuality and legalizing same-sex marriage.

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Ivan Massow built a £22m business dedicated to providing insurance and mortgages. to gay men and women. All it took to take it down was a homophobic insurance giant, he claims

Massow founded Massow Financial Services back in the early 1990s, when insurance companies refused to give gay people equal protection. The AIDS crisis made gays a bad investment and many companies denied gays coverage. And, if they did, the rates were extortionately inflated. Massow stepped in to adjust the rates. The company took off and soon enough Massow found himself competing with the big boys. He even ran a series of adverts taking on more established companies' anti-gay reputations, including a 1996 poster against a company called Allied Dunbar, which would later become part of Swiss insurance monolith, Zurich.

In 2002, Zurich approached Massow to arrange a cease-fire and potentially lucrative business deal. As part of the arrangement, Zurich floated Massow a £330,000 loan. Massow admits he doubted Zurich's claims that they would adjust their policies for gay people, but he signed the contract anyway. It soon became clear, however, that Zurich had no intentions of altering their discriminatory ways. He alleged they were cruising Massow's client list.

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Will & Grace's legacy lives on. The zany fag/hag groundbreaker changed the shape of media - gay and mainstream, alike, giving middle America another, more appetizing view of the homo breed. The wildly popular half-hour sitcom continues to be shown in syndication, thus garnering even more fans. And the show's legal legacy keeps kicking, as well.

Producers David Kohan and Jason "Max" Mutchnick filed a $55 million lawsuit against NBC back in 2003. The gay-straight buddies claim the National Broadcasting Corporation undersold the show's value when reworking a licensing deal. Access Hollywood elaborates:

The lawsuit alleged NBC Studios cut a sweetheart deal because Will & Grace was produced by NBC Studios and licensed to NBC. Attorneys for NBC Studios, a subsidiary of NBC Universal, denied wrongdoing.

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While some gay men use the internet to find their next trick, Michael and Rich Butler took to the world wide web to find a baby. The San Jose couple logged onto a popular adoption site - the straightforwardly named Adoption.com - and hoped to post their profile, thus giving birth mothers a chance to offer up their offspring. Unfortunately for the Butlers, the Mormon owners of the Arizona-based site had three words for them: "No gays allowed".

Insulted and incensed, the Butlers called their attorney and filed a suit against the aforementioned owners - Nathan and Dale Gwilliam. The father and son team claim they can discriminate against the Butlers because Arizona doesn't share California's anti-discrimination laws. A judge, however, has ruled that the company must honor out-of-state laws and that the Butlers can go ahead with their proposed lawsuit. The case doesn't just help the Butlers, of course, but could set new standards for internet businesses. The National Center For Lesbian Rights' legal direction Sharon Minter says:

It means that companies that do business with California residents on the Internet cannot discriminate against LGBT couples... It's actually an emerging issue across the country whether Internet businesses have to comply with state anti-discrimination and consumer protection laws.

Meanwhile, the Gwilliam's attorney insists the Butlers could have avoided the brouhaha if they had simply concealed their homosexuality. Sound ridiculous? Check this out:

If a homosexual man married a lesbian, they simply would not be asking the question, 'What is your sexual orientation?' It would not be an issue.

Gay couple can sue adoption site [Bay Area Reporter]

The war of words continues over in Hereford, England, where Bishop Anthony Priddis (pictured) has been accused of denying John Reaney a job because Reaney's a bit bent. Okay, not a bit. A lot. He's totally gay and totally thinks Priddis discriminated against him because he's totally gay. Priddis claimed yesterday it totally came down to a matter of celibacy, not sexuality.

But Reaney stuck to his story in court today. He remembers Priddis' celibacy suspicions clearly and that he promised to keep it in his pants:

I made it very clear to the bishop that I was not seeking a relationship and would adhere to his wishes if I were under his authority...He asked me 'what would you do if you met someone?' I told that if I felt a relationship might develop in the future, I would discuss it with him.

However, I reiterated to him that I was not in a sexual relationship and I did intend to remain that way and I explicitly told him that I was certainly happy to remain celibate for the duration of the post.

This contradictory testimony puts the tribunal in a totally precarious position...

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Talk about getting your panties in a twist. The Concerned Women For America has called for a federal investigation into hate crime accounts. The conservative collective insists that gay activists are too eager to label crimes against gays "hate crimes" and, therefore, have skewed FBI statistics in their favor.

The crux of their argument rests on the Andrew Anthos case. As you may recall, the 72-year old gay Michigan allegedly got into an anti-gay scuffle in February. His injuries were so extensive that doctors couldn't do anything and he died a week later. The incident fueled national outrage, a fruitless manhunt and spurred Michigan Senator Carl Levin to introduce fresh hate crime legislation. A coroners reporter, however, asserts that Anthos wasn't attacked. He simply fell, thus sinking hate crime claims. CWA leader, the penis-possessing Matt Barber, fumes:

To make this poor man their 'hate crimes' poster boy, and exploit his unfortunate accident by pinning a 'hate crime' on some phantom 'black man' for political gain is both racist and reprehensible.

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Colonialism may largely be a thing of the past, but its legacies still linger. For example, as we've mentioned before, India's law books still recognize the British-originated Section 377, as do the governments in Malaysia, Singapore and other long-independent former colonies.

Written in the 1861 by colonialist Lord Macaulay, the law effectively outlaws same-sex sexin', yet remains a legislative rarity. As Doug Sanders reports over at Fridae, the Brits overturned the law back in 1982, when Jeffrey Dudgeon successfully argued that he had been subject to intimidation and "agitation" by blackmailers looking to expose him. The case remains the same in India, where Section 377 remains a legislative - but not a social - rarity. As politicians and a few gay activists rally against the archaic stipulation, countless queers in these nations still face intimidation, thus forcing them into the shadows. Sanders explains, however, that sunlight's only a shout away.

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