Paul Bruno, 27, and his partner were sitting close to one another after hailing a taxi at 13th Street and First Avenue on Monday night.

Bruno told the Post that the taxi driver, Medhat Monhamed, pulled the car over after driving only two blocks and said, “You guys have to get out of the taxi! Hugging is not allowed in here!”

The couple immediately filed a complaint against the driver with the Taxi and Limousine Commision (TLC) by dialing 311.

Bruno said, “I don’t know if it was a personal or religious thing. But it’s never OK to deny anyone a ride, especially when it’s such blatant and direct discrimination.”

A spokesman for TLC said they would investigate and take this allegation seriously, resulting in a $200 to $500 fine for Mohamed if it is his first offense.

Both men want a formal apology from the driver.

Bruno said, “He’s in the wrong place and in the wrong line of work if he doesn’t have an open and tolerant attitude,” adding, “I’ve seen a lot more go on in taxis than hugging.”

Caldwell, 56, married his partner of 34 years, Rev. David Farrell, 72, last year in June.

Spouses of employees fly free on SkyWest, but Caldwell claims the airline refuses to give his husband the free fares it provides to heterosexual spouses.

SkyWest, an equal opportunity employer, says Gilbert Caldwell’s husband is his “travel companion,” entitling him to fly at a discount rate but not for free.

Caldwell said, “I am asking SkyWest to give me the same benefits that they give my married heterosexual co-workers.”

State law entitles same-sex spouses and domestic partners to be treated the same as heterosexual married couples in employment, housing, insurance and commerce.

Tara Borelli, Staff Attorney of the gay rights organization Lambda Legal, has been assigned to the case.

“This is a blatant violation of California law requiring that married same-sex couples be treated with the same respect and protections as married heterosexuals,” said Borelli.

“Travel benefits are an important part of airline employees’ compensation, and denying spousal travel benefits to married lesbian and gay employees is a denial of equal pay for equal work. SkyWest is telling Mr. Caldwell that his spouse doesn’t count and that his work is not as valuable as that of other employees. This letter is our final attempt to correct SkyWest and Delta’s clearly unlawful travel benefits policy before Mr. Caldwell proceeds to court.”

Borelli said Caldwell will sue for damages unless SkyWest changes its policy.

The Bush Administration implemented this form of sex-education during his presidency but the federal funding was cut earlier this year by the Obama administration.

According to National Sexuality Resource Center (NSRC), the Senate Finance Committee passed the amendment from Senator Orrin Hatch two weeks ago to reinstate $50 million per year over the course of five years into the program.

The amendment passed in a 12–11 vote.

The NSRC has advised sex-ed supports to call into their Senate office to ensure that Congress does not fund the abstinence-until-marriage programs.

Members of the Westboro Baptist Church, of Topeka, Kan., arrived at the University at 8:10 a.m., to protest against Rutgers Hillel, an affiliate of Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life, which is the largest Jewish campus organization in the world.

Westboro, an independent church headed by Fred Phelps and comprised mostly of his family members, is best known for picketing the funeral of Matthew Shepard in 1998, but it has also protested everything from the Marines to the Academy Awards. This week, Westboro is touring New Jersey.

Rutgers earned a visit because it has the fourth largest Jewish population of any campus in the nation. When Rutgers Hillel learned of Westboro’s intentions, they planned the counter-rally, called Rutgers Unite Against Hate, publicizing it through Facebook.

Jeff Rubin, a Washington, D.C. spokesman for Hillel, believes that visiting Rutgers was just part of Westboro’s national campaign to gain publicity.

“Westboro’s message that God hates a number of different groups is the exact opposite of what we believe,” he said.

He said that Hillel promotes a positive message of tolerance and community building. “We don’t like to be put in the position of being against anything.”

His advice for students was to remain calm and meet hatred with peace and tolerance.

Westboro’s members stood across the street and down the block from the 2nd Reformed Church, which had posted gay flags and welcome signs outside their door in solidarity with the gay and Jewish student population at Rutgers. They were so far from the Hillel building that protesting students could barely hear their chanting or read their signs, which included: “God hates you,” “Fag university,” ”Israel is doomed,” and “You’re going to hell.”

Eric Idelson held a sign that said, “God loves fags,” as he chanted “R-U, rah, rah!” Idelson is a member of Gamma Sigma, the only co-ed social fraternity on the campus. Approximately half of their members are gay and lesbian, he said. Other students carried signs that ranged from the serious – “Proud to be a Jew” – to the cheeky, like “God loves weed” and “God hates Pepsi.”

Other LGBT groups who showed support were BIGLARU, Bisexuals, Gays, Lesbians and Allies of Rutgers University, and LLEGO, an organization for queer students of color. Some dressed in drag and sloganed T-shirts, while others wore scarlet red, Rutgers’ school color, to show spirit.

LLEGO member Qualiyah Arrington said, “We just want to show them we’re proud of who we are.”

Before the counter-rally ended, the center handed out noisemakers so that students could drown out the protestors, but Westboro had already left.

According to a spokesman for the New Brunswick police department, Westboro had stated that they would stay for 30 minutes. At 8:45 a.m. they were on a bus to their next location.

Because they left so quickly, some students found the protest to be anti-climactic. “I was expecting a little more tension rather than a bunch of people just standing in the rain,” said one student, Pat McCatherine.

Minutes past 9 a.m. students dispersed, singing Rutgers chants and twirling noisemakers.

Rutgers Hillel’s annual three-day program Days without Hate is Nov. 2 to Nov. 4.

Clinton attended a ceremony unveiling a statue of Walt Whitman at Moscow State University with Russian officials including Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov. Luzhkov has blocked all attempts to hold gay pride marches in Moscow, once saying they “can be described in no other way than as satanic.”

Clinton did not mention of the issue during the ceremony. Some biographers have described Whitman as homosexual and U.S. gay activists have claimed him as symbol of their movement.

“Just as Pushkin and Whitman reset poetry we are resetting our relations for the 21st century,” Clinton said. A statue of the Russian poet Alexander Pushkin was erected at George Washington University, in Washington, D.C., in 2000.

It was not clear whether Luzhkov was aware of Whitman’s status as a gay icon, and sponsors of the statue said they were honoring Whitman strictly for his contributions to literature.

“Whitman transcended his sexuality in his art and I would like to thank Mayor Luzhkov for welcoming him in his city and have absolutely nothing to say about those things,” said James W. Symington, a former four-time congressman for Missouri and representative of the American-Russian Cultural Cooperation Foundation.

Gay activist Nikolai Alexeyev said Wednesday he was disappointed Clinton did not discuss discrimination against gays.

“Russia is supposed to be a democracy and she said nothing,” he said.

Alexeyev had called on Clinton to denounce what he called entrenched and degrading homophobic attitudes in Russia at a news conference Tuesday.

A U.S. State Department spokesman said the department was unaware of any request from the Russian gay community.

Homosexuality was only decriminalized in Russia in 1993 and homophobic attitudes remain widespread.

Activists have taken the struggle to hold a gay pride parade in Moscow to the European Court of Justice, which is scheduled to rule on the issue in early 2010.

The statue of Walt Whitman was placed in the gardens of Moscow State University, where in May more than 30 gay activists were arrested for attempting to hold a pride march.

The statue of Walt Whitman will complement a statue of the Russian poet Alexander Pushkin installed in Washington in 2000.

Whitman sculptor Alexander Bourganov remarked at a press conference Tuesday that the opening had been delayed and been politically difficult. He did not elaborate.

The vote rejected a recommendation, from the staff of the Maine Commission on Governmental Ethics and Election Practices, that it not investigate the campaign funding practices of the anti-gay Stand for Marriage Maine group, which is spearheading support for a ballot measure in November to overturn a newly passed law to provide same-sex couples with the same rights to marriage licenses and benefits as it does to straight couples.

That staff recommendation, issued September 29, said there was not sufficient reason to believe that group, the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), or any other group supporting Ballot Measure No. 1 had violated state campaign reporting laws.

California gay activist Fred Karger, founder of Californians Against Hate, requested the investigation. Karger’s group, founded just last year, studied public records to identify businesses and individuals who contributed to the anti-gay campaign in California. While doing similar work from public records in Maine, Karger told the commission he believes NOM and Stand for Marriage Maine are deliberately violating state campaign finance disclosure requirements.

Two Democrats and one Republican on the commission agreed, voting for an investigation. One Republican and one unaffiliated member, Chairman Michael Freidman of Bangor, voted against.

“I’m very pleased,” said Karger, in a phone interview following the vote. “The commission showed great courage today in agreeing to going ahead and launching an investigation.”

No spokesperson could be reached immediately following the vote for either the National Organization for Marriage or Stand for Marriage Maine.

A three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the signs contained “imaginative and hyperbolic rhetoric” protected by the First Amendment. Such messages are intended to spark debate and cannot be reasonably read as factual assertions about an individual, the court said.

A jury in Baltimore had awarded Albert Snyder damages for emotional distress and invasion of privacy. The 2006 funeral of Snyder’s son, Marine Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder in Westminster, Md., was among many military funerals that have been picketed by members of the fundamentalist Westboro Baptist Church in Kansas.

Albert Snyder’s attorney, Sean E. Summers, said he and his client were disappointed.

“The most troubling fact is it leaves these grieving families helpless,” Summers said. “If you can’t use the civil process, you have no recourse.”

He said he will appeal the ruling to either the full appeals court or to the U.S. Supreme Court.

“We feel we owe that to Mr. Snyder and other families who have been harassed, humiliated and abused,” Summers said.

Shirley Phelps-Roper, whose father is Westboro pastor Fred Phelps, said she was pleased by the ruling.

“They had no case but they were hoping the appellate court would not do their duty to follow the rule of law and the appellate court would not do that,” said Phelps-Roper, who was among those named in the lawsuit.

“They didn’t change God and they didn’t stop us,” she said. “What they managed to do was give us a huge door, a global door of utterance. Our doctrine is all over the world because of what they did.”

Members of the Topeka, Kan.-based church have used protests at military funerals to spread their belief that U.S. deaths in the Iraq war are punishment for the nation’s tolerance of homosexuality. One of the signs at Snyder’s funeral combined the U.S. Marine Corps motto with a slur against gay men.

Other signs included “America is Doomed,” “God Hates the USA/Thank God for 9/11,” “Priests Rape Boys” and “Thank God for IEDs,” a reference to the roadside bombs that have killed many U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“As a threshold matter, as utterly distasteful as these signs are, they involve matters of public concern, including the issue of homosexuals in the military, the sex-abuse scandal within the Catholic Church, and the political and moral conduct of the United States and its citizens,” Judge Robert King wrote in the appeals court’s opinion.

“Additionally, no reasonable reader could interpret any of these signs as asserting actual and objectively verifiable facts about Snyder or his son,” he wrote.

The court also said a written piece about Snyder’s funeral on the Westboro Web site was protected by the First Amendment. Unlike the signs, the Web site piece specifically named the Snyders. Even so, the court said, the missive was “primarily concerned with the Defendants’ strongly held views on matters of public concern.”

This man recently profiled in that newspaper is effective in his advocacy work because he is “pleasantly, ruthlessly sane.”

This man, according to the reporter, is likeable, a thoughtful talker.

His “children are precocious and sweet; his wife is gracious and funny.”

This man, Brian Brown, will be home late from work because, according to that newspaper profile, he’s “going off to quietly crusade for the hearts and minds of people who, like Brown, pride themselves on being rational, mainstream and sane.”

And do you know what Brian Brown is “quietly” crusading for?

He’s crusading — and not so quietly — to keep same-sex marriage illegal in most states and overturn same-sex marriages in states where it is now recognized.

Brian Brown is the executive director of the National Organization for Marriage, and he’s troubled that some people think he’s a bigot for trying to block our access to equal treatment under the law.

“He tries to help people see that opposing gay marriage does not make them bigots, that the argument should have nothing to do with hate or fear, and everything to do with history and tradition,” the Post story on Aug. 28 read.

I don’t like to publicly complain about the press. For me, that’s akin to airing the family’s dirty laundry — of which my family has none, by the way.

But I’m offended with the Post story as both a journalist and as a lesbian who someday wants to marry her partner — a 16-year engagement ought to be evidence of our commitment.

I’m troubled by the one-sided, gratuitous, assuming, fawning nature of the story — offered as a news report, not a column.

And troubling is the omission in the story of any serious exploration of Brown’s “rationale” argument against the legalization of same-sex marriage. Essentially his simplistic argument is that he says historically and traditionally marriage has been between a man and a woman and it is rational to never change. If the reporter had simply Googled “same-sex marriage history,” she would have realized that Brown means for white people, marriage historically has been between a man and a woman. She would have found numerous references to same-gender marriage in Africa and among Native North Americans.

And, while the reporter glosses over some NOM “missteps,” such as the offending “Gathering Storm” commercial intended to rally voters against gay marriage in California, where is the reference to the ethics questions involving NOM in Iowa and Maine?

Referring to NOM’s anti-gay marriage work in Iowa, W. Charles Smithson, director and counsel for the Iowa Ethics and Campaign Disclosure Board, recently wrote to Brown: “I want to remind you that an ‘insignificant amount’ of NOM’s income is permitted to come from business corporations. Thus, as you solicit for your organization please keep this in mind in the event that you are going to continue to be active in Iowa elections.”

Smithson also referred to NOM’s claim that it need not disclose donors to its campaign against gay marriage in Iowa.

“If people are going to donate to your organization for express advocacy activities in Iowa and those donations exceed $750 in the aggregate in a calendar year, your organization will be required to form a PAC and disclose those contributors. The independent expenditure process in Iowa is not a vehicle to shield political contributors.”

In Maine, the Commission on Governmental Ethics and Election Practices recently notified Brown that it will decide Oct. 1 whether to “conduct any investigation” regarding alleged fundraising violations by NOM and the Stand for Marriage Maine PAC.

Did NOM raise money — as much as $250,000 — for the campaign to repeal Maine’s same-sex marriage law and then donate the money to Stand for Marriage without filing campaign finance reports?

We know NOM can raise that kind of money. The organization helped bankroll the costly Proposition 8 campaign in California.

Did NOM, with its campaign against gay marriage in New England, seek to hide donations? A complaint filed by Fred Karger of Californians Against Hate notes that a March solicitation for donations to NOM states, “And unlike in California, every dollar you give to NOM’s Northeast Action Plan today is private, with no risk of harassment from gay marriage protestors (sic).”

That NOM donation request announced its need to fund a new “hard-hitting radio ad” to air in Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine and New Jersey that was developed by the public affairs group that managed the Prop 8 campaign.

The ad is titled “Consequences,” is aimed at the “potential marriage activists who listen to talk radio” and emphasizes that “legalizing gay marriage has consequences for kids.”

“As the ad says — if our politicians adopt same-sex marriage, our rights won’t matter much — not parents, not people of faith, not any of us who will experience the consequences of redefining marriage. If we don’t step up now, we’ll all have to accept gay marriage — ‘whether we like it or not.’”

Ahh, Brian Brown and NOM, “going off to quietly crusade for the hearts and minds of people who, like Brown, pride themselves on being rational, mainstream and sane.”

Bauer is the Lieutenant Governor of South Carolina, and when the news broke that Governor Mark Sanford had taken the longest and steamiest hike on the Appalachian Trail in the history of outdoorsmanship, Bauer began to edge his way into the national limelight.

As Sanford’s sex scandal – which would have been irrelevant had he not walked into that big, glass Governor’s mansion as a Christian right candidate who ran on his narrowly defined “pro-family” morals – and the related you-were-using-state-funds-for-WHAT? scandal began to build up steam and as South Carolinians raised objections to their Governor disappearing for days on end, it looked to everyone like Bauer would almost certainly move up a rank.

And suddenly it was important for the 40-year-old bachelor to let us know how straight he is.

We all knew what was coming next, right?

At the exact moment of Bauer’s announcement of congenital not-gayness, if someone had blindfolded you, spun you around three times, and made you take the exact same sedative they use when they have to knock out a gorilla at the zoo, couldn’t you still have typed out the news stories that would be coming out a couple of months later?

Of course you could have. Probably with 95% accuracy or better.

And if I told you that Bauer is also a hard-right Christian candidate who has (say it along with me) repeatedly worked against LGBT rights, you could pretty much double up on the tranquilizer darts and write the stories while you were still in the coma, right?

You will be flabbergasted to hear that last Monday Bauer was (allegedly) outed by a blog that specializes in outing politicians who vote against LGBT rights, and by Friday the mainstream media began to pick up on it.

This process was helped along – AGAIN by Bauer, who needs new media advisors, and fast – when he accused Governor Sanford of having planted the big gay rumors. Which gave the Sanford camp the chance to very publicly deny the accusation of spreading rumors and bring said rumors incredible amounts of publicity along the way.

Lieutenant Governor Bauer and Governor Sanford, one hears, are political rivals and can’t stand each other.

Bauer had helpfully announced that it would be better for everyone if Sanford would resign, and Sanford announced that would be staying right where he is, even though that is of absolutely no help to anybody.

And now the legislature and the Republican party are stuck trying to figure out whether they’re rather have a known sleazebag in the office or a possible closet case who’s about to have his door ripped off the hinges.

Correspondents in South Carolina have pointed out to me that there is an odd baseline tolerance in the state – more than a few “open secret” politicians have done quite well, thank you very much. It’s OK to be gay and in office there, just not to be so indiscreet as to mention it.

Which indicates that if Bauer had just kept his yap shut instead of preemptively announcing his ramrod, country-road, geometrically perfect straightness, he might have been politically fine. At least for a while.

But now the rumors are out there, and everyone will have to deal with the idea of an out, or at least outed, gay Governor. (Including, one hopes, Bauer.)

Thanks to André Bauer’s vicious voting record, his own press conference, and the magic of the Internet, those rumors will never, ever go away. And I will laugh and laugh every time they come up, because he deserves it.

But in the interest of being a better person and making a better world, I’d like to offer a little advice to politicians who may be watching Bauer’s case with a certain vested interest:

Remember that you can’t legislate the naughty feelings away.

You can debate about whether or not programs designed to “cure” same-sex attractions actually work until you’re blue in the face. I suspect we’ll have to agree to disagree on those.

What isn’t up for debate is the idea that writing things down on paper to mess with the rights of other people who are perfectly happy and in love with members of the same sex will somehow make you less gay. It won’t, no matter how many times you do it. It just makes you spiteful.

In fact, it won’t even make you look less gay. In some cases, when you write things down that are too aggressively anti-LGBT, it makes you look like someone who is trying too hard to show how very not-gay they are, which in turn raises a few eyebrows.

And there you are, right back where you started, wondering if legislation to stop members of the LGBT community from operating motor vehicles or being allowed in the produce aisle would help.

Plus, once you start legislating private matters for other people, your own privacy is pretty much fair game.

Can you see why you might not want that? You know, just in case?

So what’s a closeted politician to do?

There are things that Bauer could have done and said that would make his position a lot easier right now.

Simply asserting everyone’s right to privacy would have bought Bauer the right to his own privacy, gay or straight. But for some reason that’s not enough pop and sizzle for some people.

If you, as a politician, are asked to sign on to anti-LGBT legislation and need a little public bluster, you can say something along the lines of, “I think that’s for individual churches to decide,” or “I have deep convictions in that regard, but I can only speak for and within my own church.”

See how moral you sound?

Or you could just say, “As a Christian, I’ve been taught not to judge, and to treat everyone with compassion and respect.”

It sounds great, it should, if you recall, be entirely true, and it buys you a lot more room for “moral lapses” than “As a Christian, I am absolutely certain that God has approved exactly one way to live and appointed me to enforce that.”

Or you could try “I’m concerned that legislation like that is the first step towards our government interfering in the bedrooms of married heterosexual couples.”

If you can make crazy eyes while you say it, you get instant wingnut street cred! Try to work in Communism for extra bonus points.

But above all…

Do not hold press conferences about how not gay you are.

Especially if you haven’t been asked.

I promise you, it’s not the clever ruse you think it is.

The brief announcement, keeping to Vatican tradition, did not say why the staunchly conservative Monsignor Joseph Martino, 63, Bishop of Scranton, Pennsylvania, had submitted his resignation. He took up the post in 2003.

Under canon law, which contain the “rules” of the Catholic church, bishops are expected to offer their resignation when they turn 75, but the pope sometimes asks bishops to stay on beyond that age.

The Vatican said that the pope had accepted the resignation under a provision of canon law in which a bishop due to illness or “some other grave reason, has become unsuited” to carry out his duties, in which case the bishop is “earnestly requested to offer his resignation from office.”

A spokesman for the Vatican declined to elaborate on the resignation because the Diocese of Scranton had announced it will hold a news conference later in the day.

The resignation came as no surprise. A local newspaper reported last week that workers removed furniture from Martino’s residence in Scranton.

The pope also accepted the resignation of Scranton’s auxiliary bishop John Dougherty for reasons of age. No new appointments were announced.