Judge Yves de Montigny said Friday the board erred last February when it rejected Bethany Smith’s bid.

Smith says she fled the army instead of going to Afghanistan with her unit because she was harassed and threatened by fellow soldiers over her sexual orientation.

The U.S. military has a policy of discharging openly gay members but Smith says she was denied a discharge because soldiers were needed for the Afghanistan mission.

The judge says the board unfairly dismissed evidence suggesting that gays face harsher treatment in the American military justice system.

Smith says she would fear for her life if she were returned to the army.

A new study about the U.S. military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy questions the assumption that allowing openly gay and lesbian military personnel to serve in the U.S. armed forces could harm military readiness.

The study surveyed military personnel who had served in Iraq and Afghanistan and found that having a gay or lesbian colleague in their unit had no significant impact on their unit’s cohesion or readiness. The study, by researchers from the RAND Corporation and the University of Florida, was published online by the journal Armed Forces and Society.

“Service members said the most important factors for unit cohesion and readiness were the quality of their officers, training and equipment,” said Laura Miller, study co-author and a sociologist at RAND, a nonprofit research organization. “Serving with another service member who was gay or lesbian was not a significant factor that affected unit cohesion or readiness to fight.”

Since the law prohibiting open service of gay and lesbian military personnel is based on the premise that open integration would harm cohesion and readiness, the findings suggest that the U.S. military should revisit the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, said Miller and study co-author Bonnie Moradi, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Florida.

The study found that just 40 percent of the military members surveyed expressed support for the policy, while 28 percent opposed it and 33 percent were neutral—less support than seen in previous surveys.

About 20 percent of those polled said they were aware of a gay or lesbian member in their unit, and about half of those said their presence was well known. In addition, three-quarters of those surveyed said they felt comfortable or very comfortable in the presence of gays or lesbians, according to the study.

The study, “Attitudes of Iraq and Afghanistan War Veterans Toward Gay and Lesbian Service Members,” will appear later in the print edition of Armed Forces and Society. The study was commissioned by the Palm Center at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Although RAND has done other research on this topic, this study was the product of a contract directly with the researchers and not through RAND. It is available online here.

Miller and Moradi examined information from a 2006 voluntary online poll conducted by Zogby International of 545 U.S. service members who had served in Iraq or Afghanistan. The survey sample was pulled from a national panel composed of more than 1 million members and screened to select service members who had served in Iraq or Afghanistan.

The survey sample included personnel from all service branches and from a mix of ranks and occupations. The majority of respondents were on active duty at the time of the survey, but the sample also included reservists and military veterans.

Researchers found no significant differences regarding attitudes toward gay and lesbian military members among members of the different services. Other findings from the study include:

Compared to previous studies of military members, support for the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” ban continues to decline. The earliest polls in 1993 showed 75 percent agreed with the ban, 8 percent unsure and 16 percent were against it.

The important factors for cohesion and readiness were officer/non-commissioned officer quality, training quality and equipment quality. Beyond these factors, knowing a gay or lesbian person in the unit was not associated significantly with ratings of unit cohesion or readiness.

The most frequently endorsed arguments in support of integrating gays and lesbians were those that prioritized performance and qualifications over exclusionary practices.

Moradi and Miller noted that further research is needed to explore these and some of the other findings of the study, such as the general pattern that high-grade enlisted personnel and officers were more supportive of the ban than low- and mid-grade enlisted personnel. Those who reported prior training on the prevention of anti-gay harassment also were more favorable of the ban than those who had not had the training.

Wanda Sykes’ weekly Fox comedy show debuts 11 p.m. EST Saturday, followed by George Lopez’s four-night-a-week talk show on TBS, starting 11 p.m. EST Monday. They join “The Mo’Nique Show” on BET.

Lopez is counting on an audience hungry for something different – as in the first Hispanic to host a nighttime talk show on a major network, cable or broadcast.

Sykes is the first black late-night host since the late 1990s, when celebrities Earvin “Magic” Johnson and Keenan Ivory Wayans tried and failed to follow in Arsenio Hall’s successful 1989-94 footsteps.

“There’s a huge percentage of people not watching late-night TV at all,” Lopez said, figuring that the shows headlined by hosts including David Letterman, Conan O’Brien and Jimmy Kimmel draw from roughly the same audience pool.

For people of color, the actor and comedian said, “I don’t think a lot of their needs are met with the current talk shows. I would pull a different audience.”

Shari Anne Brill, an analyst with media-buyer Carat USA in New York, echoes Lopez’s assertion.

“There is a huge, growing multicultural population in this country, and the current late-night fare doesn’t really take them into account,” she said.

But neither Lopez nor Sykes are talking about practicing exclusionary TV. Lopez’s ABC sitcom drew a cross-section of viewers, and Sykes said she expects her show to attract the same mixed crowd she gets at her standup appearances.

“Young, old, male, female, all races, gay, straight. I love the audience that I draw,” Sykes said.

She rebuts the idea she got the job because of her gender, ethnicity or sexual orientation (the actress-comedian, who appears on CBS’ “The New Adventures of Old Christine,” came out as gay in 2008).

“I do understand the importance of being on a late-night talk show as a black, gay woman. But I’ve been at this for 20 years. I don’t think they (networks) were saying, `Hey, it would be fun to get a black woman on late-night. Who fits that role?’

“I got this show in spite of being a black lesbian,” she said, adding that viewers will tune in to see her or Lopez and not a type.

“It’s all driven by the host. It’s not what you’re getting from a minority, it’s us,” Sykes said.

She doesn’t see an “Obama effect” in the sudden late-night diversity, given that she was approached before the election of the first African-American U.S. president. But Lopez said his interest was piqued as he campaigned for the Democratic candidate.

“Being with Barack for a year and seeing the people and how their eyes and their faces filled with hope for him, for this country … and, on a very smaller scale, to have a show that is fun and can galvanize people and bring them together” was appealing, he said.

The two shows, as sketched by their hosts, will take different approaches.

Lopez promises to bring “the party back to late-night,” signaling a looser, hipper hour in the tradition of “The Arsenio Hall Show,” said analyst Bill Carroll of media buyer Katz Television in New York. Sykes is planning Bill Maher-type panels with both lighthearted and serious discussion of politics and culture as part of her mix.

“In some ways, these shows are looking at breaking the mold,” Carroll said. “Lopez Tonight,” he suggests, could be “what late-night might look like in the future.”

Sykes, whose show replaces Fox’s “Mad TV,” could compete successfully in her partial overlap with NBC’s “Saturday Night Live,” analyst Brill said. “Viewers could watch her show and then switch to `SNL’ in time for the news, which is the only part that’s funny anyway.”

Eva Longoria-Parker, Ellen DeGeneres and Los Angeles Lakers basketball star Kobe Bryant are the scheduled debut night guests for Lopez. Sykes will welcome Mary Lynn Rajskub of “24,” Daryl “Chill” Mitchell of “Brothers” and “The Amazing Race” host Phil Keoghan.

John Ridley, head writer for Sykes, said he’s wary of asserting that the show will “blow apart” the late-night model.

“If you look at all the shows, they’re not different. Are we going to have a monologue? Absolutely. Guests? Yes. A panel? Yes. But it reflects Wanda’s sensibility,” he said.

And that, it’s safe to say, is not akin to what Carroll calls the “predominantly middle-aged – to be kind – white men” that have long dominated late-night.

City controller Annise Parker and former city attorney Gene Locke are headed to a runoff to become mayor of America’s fourth-biggest city.

Parker, who would be the first openly gay mayor of Houston, collected nearly 31 percent of the vote Tuesday.

Locke, with 25 percent, topped architect and urban planner Peter Brown, who had nearly 23 percent.

A runoff is needed because no one received 50 percent of the vote. A specific date has not yet been set for the election, but it will be in December.

A victory for Parker would make Houston the largest U.S. city with an openly gay mayor.

Victory Fund candidate Charles Pugh will become the first openly gay member of the Detroit City Council.  But the political newcomer could also become the city council president if he continues to hold on to the top spot among 18 candidates vying for 9 at-large city council seats.

The findings came in a report by an 18-member panel of independent experts who urged the Kremlin to implement a number of legal reforms. They include narrowing the broad definitions of terrorism and extremism under Russian law, decriminalizing defamation cases against journalists and granting appeal rights to people forced into psychiatric hospitals by the courts.

The expert panel said it also was concerned about violence against lesbian, gay and bisexual persons, including reports of police harassment. It said it received reports of people being assaulted or even killed because they were gay or lesbian. The panel said it was concerned at the “systematic discrimination against individuals on the basis of their sexual orientation” in Russia.

Homosexuality was decriminalized in Russia in the 1990s, but many Russians are vehemently opposed to expansion of gay rights or gay-rights demonstrations. Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov is an outspoken foe of gay rights and always has blocked attempts to hold gay pride marches in the capital, calling one a satanic gathering.

The U.N. panel – which this week assessed the compliance of Russia and four other countries with the U.N.’s 1966 international treaty on civil and political rights – receives its information from various U.N. agencies, non-governmental organizations and cases at the European Court of Human Rights.

Then one morning, Cunningham picked up a local newspaper with a front-page story under the headline, “Homosexual Prostitutes Move into Residential Neighborhood.” His address was listed below.

For days afterward, Cunningham said an angry mob gathered on his lawn hurling rocks and bricks and calling them “batty boys” – a Jamaican slang term for gay. Eventually, the pair grabbed what they could and fled on foot. Cunningham said neither he nor his boyfriend were prostitutes – the slur was just another example of the abuse gay men faced in Jamaica.

The story was one of many that Cunningham, now 32 and living in Worcester, recently shared with a federal immigration judge in his successful bid to win asylum in the United States. And it’s similar to other stories cited by a small but growing number of other gay, lesbian and transgender asylum seekers who are using U.S. immigration courts to argue that their sexual orientation makes it too dangerous for them to return home.

“I had no choice,” said Andre Azevedo, 39, a transgender man from Brazil who recently won asylum and now lives in New York. “Where I’m from, heterosexual men practice hate crimes against us like a sport, and the police do nothing to stop it.”

Since 1994, sexual orientation has been grounds for asylum in the United States. That’s when former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno ruled in a case that persecution based on sexual orientation could be potential grounds for asylum.

Until recently, those grounds have been rarely used and such cases represent only a fraction of all asylum cases.

But now immigrant and gay activists say more asylum seekers from the Middle East, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean are citing sexual orientation as reasons for seeking asylum. Activists say the asylum seekers are escaping rape, persecution, violence, and threats of death from places where homosexuality is either outlawed or strongly, socially shunned.

Federal immigration law allows individuals asylum if they can prove a well-founded fear of persecution in their country of origin based upon race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group. Those applying for asylum are already in the United States, legally or illegally.

No one knows for sure just how many have sought asylum on sexual orientation grounds. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services doesn’t keep data on asylum cases won on that basis.

Still, last year Immigration Equality, a New York-based nonprofit group that helps gay clients with immigration cases, successfully won 55 asylum cases using sexual orientation as grounds, a record for the organization, said the group’s legal director Victoria Neilson. That’s up from 30 wins in 2007 and 27 in 2006, Neilson said.

And a Worcester, Mass.-based nonprofit group, Lutheran Social Services, has recently won five cases and is looking to help others.

“I think more people are finding out that this is an option,” said Lisa Laurel Weinberg, an attorney with the group.

However, not all cases for asylum based on sexual orientation have been successful. For example, a gay Brazilian man who was married in Massachusetts and whose American husband remains in the state was recently denied asylum by the Obama administration on humanitarian grounds, despite pleas from Sen. John Kerry. Genesio “Junior” Januario Oliveira had originally requested asylum because he was raped as a teenager, but an immigration judge denied the application, saying Oliveira repeatedly said in the hearing that he “was never physically harmed” by anyone in Brazil.

He was forced to return to Brazil in 2007.

Cunningham said he decided to file for asylum after working for a few years in the United States on a work visa. He conducted research online but couldn’t find an immigration group to help him with the case. “One group said my case clashed with their Christian values,” Cunningham said.

Many gay rights groups, he said, also had limited services for immigrants.

It wasn’t until Cunningham connected with Jozefina Lantz, the director of immigrant services at Lutheran Social Services, that Cunningham gained support.

To win, however, Cunningham had to revisit painful moments of running from mobs in Jamaica. Even the police would point him out for persecution, he said. In successfully arguing Cunningham’s case for asylum, Weinberg also said Jamaica’s sodomy laws banning sex between men and “dancehall” music – whose lyrics often advocate violence against gays – made life for Cunningham unbearable.

Cunningham won asylum in January 2008.

During his asylum hearing, Azevedo had to recall violent episodes in Brazil when he and a group of transsexuals were attacked in bars. He recalled a transgender woman set on fire. Each time Azevedo said he went to police about an attack or a threat, the officers didn’t even bother to file a report.

“I had such a horrific experience,” said Azevedo, who was granted asylum in July. “I was always in fear of being raped, maybe even killed.”

After winning their cases, both Cunningham and Azevedo have become advocates for other asylum-seekers by giving them counseling and directing them toward legal help.

In Worcester, for example, Cunningham has helped a Lebanese and three others Jamaicans win asylum with the legal help provided by the Lutheran Social Services’ “LGBT Human Rights Protection Project.” Another case, involving an Ugandan woman, is pending in the courts.

But while those who have been granted asylum are eager to help, Azevedo said many still haven’t resolved the pain from the past and can’t go back home to visit family – those who haven’t disowned them.

Cunningham said he hasn’t gotten over the fear that, at any moment, he may be forced to flee.

“I’ve never really owned furniture,” Cunningham said. “You just never know.”

Her financial career began in 1980 when she became an account executive at Merill Lynch. Only a few years later, she became vice president of investments at Prudential Bache Securities.

In 1987, she resigned from the position and decided to launch her own business, the Suze Orman Financial Group.

The financial guru skyrocketed to instant fame and praise with the release of her 1997 book, 9 Steps to Financial Freedom and a year later, she published The Courage to Be Rich. Both books became best-sellers.

In February 2007, Orman came out as a lesbian, revealing that she had been with her partner Kathy Travis for seven years.

Orman expressed concern that life partner Travis would not receive monetary support from Orman’s several million-dollar estate upon her death.

She was an African-American woman who came out as a lesbian in 1915 before graduating from Springfield High School in Illinois.

Ruth Ellis met her partner Ceceline “Babe” Franklin in the early 1920s and moved with her to Detroit, Mich. in 1937.

Their home became the gay spot for the black community of Detroit, because it was the central location for gay and lesbian parties as well as a refuge for those African-American gays and lesbians.

She became a LGBT rights activist and public speaker, advocating lesbian and gay rights throughout her life.

In 1999, the year of Ellis’ 100th birthday, the documentary  Living with Pride: Ruth Ellis @ 100 began its screenings nationwide.

Ellis lived to 101 years old, experiencing a century of the fight for LGBT rights. Her ordinary life continues to be an inspiration to many people.

Statistical problems related to the development of the 2010 census form and the evolving legal state of same-sex relationships led Census officials to conclude that trying to include married gay couples in the overall snapshot of household marital status could yield an inaccurate number, said Gary Gates, a University of California, Los Angeles demographer who has been advising the bureau on gay issues.

Instead, same-sex married couples will be added into the category for unmarried partners, just as they were for the 2000 census. But in a marked policy departure, the agency plans to make the data on same-sex couples who described themselves as married available on a state-by-state basis.

“The Bureau has decided to give us the information, but be a little cautious,” Gates said.

The decision to develop separate sets of numbers was a compromise position that was “less about politics and more about accurate data,” he said.

Gates stressed that it was important for gay couples to participate in the census, noting that information drawn from the last one had been used in lawsuits dealing with same-sex marriage and to lobby congressional representatives who may wrongly assume they do not have many gay constituents.

Because same-sex marriages were not legal in any U.S. state a decade ago, the 2010 census is the first for which the bureau has wrestled with how to count married same-sex couples. In June, census officials announced that they would make the attempt, reversing an earlier decision made under the Bush administration.

Since then, however, it’s become clearer that a wildly inflated number could be produced if the number of heads of household who said they lived with another adult of the same sex, and described that person as a husband or wife, were only counted.

Some couples in civil unions or domestic partnerships, or who live as spouses in states where gay couples have no spousal rights, have tended in past surveys to identify themselves as husbands or wives anyway, according to Gates.

The annual American Community Survey the bureau produced for 2008, for example, had 150,000 married same-sex couples spread across every U.S. state, even though only two states – Massachusetts and for a 5-month period, California – allowed same-sex marriages. Gates estimates there are probably no more than 35,000 legally married gay couples in the country now.

Undercounting same-sex couples also remains a significant concern, Gates said, since some couples may not be living openly and fear discrimination.

Tim Olsen, assistant chief of the bureau’s field division, told gay community leaders at a census outreach meeting in San Francisco Thursday that the agency is continuing to refine the way it counts same-sex couples and could have the ability to separate married from unmarried couples in time for future surveys.

“We have a big opportunity to create a picture of America that includes us. We are not invisible anymore,” Olsen said.

This census marks the first time that gays and lesbians have been targeted for minority outreach efforts that also include reaching out to groups deemed “hard to reach” because of their disaffection with the government.

The gay community campaign will include a Web site, scheduled to go up in about two weeks, called Our Families Count, as well as advertising campaigns in cities with large gay populations. Among the video vignettes meant to demonstrate the nation’s diversity on the main census site is one featuring a transgender person, Olsen said.

“You will see yourself in these videos, whether you are Hispanic, black, white, mixed-race, gay or straight,” he said.

Although the census has not attempted to count individuals who identify as gay, lesbian or transgender, they could be included in the next count or even future editions of the annual American Community Survey, Olsen said. The survey, which is much more detailed than the 10-question census form that will be mailed to every household in March, is designed to give state and local governments a snapshot of how their populations are changing.

Olsen said gay leaders need to keep advocating if they want to be recognized.

“In terms of 2010, we are set in stone. For 2020, now is the time to start doing what you do best,” he said.