In a break between two songs, a fan held up a sign wishing her a happy birthday and audience members sang, “may you live a hundred years,” a traditional Polish birthday song.

“I feel your love!” Madonna told the crowd of tens of thousands gathered on a large green field for the latest stop in her Sticky & Sweet tour.

Many of the fans near the stage also held up paper hearts. One said: “Adopt Me.”

Her stop in Warsaw fell not only a day before her birthday, but also on the August 15, the Roman Catholic holiday celebrating the heavenly assumption of the Virgin Mary – timing that angered some Catholics.

Several people who objected to Madonna held up banners outside the concert venue, and a Catholic group tried to spearhead protests in past weeks hoping to force the Material Girl to change the date of the concert. It failed, however, to win support from the official church or the public. Though Poland, homeland of the late John Paul II, is mainly Catholic, young urban Poles have overwhelmingly embraced pop culture and mores.

During the concert, Madonna also paid tribute to Michael Jackson, who died in June.

A Jackson impersonator did the King of Pop’s signature moonwalk dance move while wearing a sequined jacket, white T-shirt, white glove and white socks, while a large photograph of him as a boy appeared on stage.

“Let’s give it up for one of the greatest artists the world has ever known,” Madonna shouted, and then segued into a performance of her old hit “Holiday.”

Prosecutor Sim Gill says in a statement there is reason to believe that although the property is private, Matt Aune and his partner, Derek Jones, did not think they could legally be ejected from the plaza because it is perceived to be open to the public.

Aune and Jones have said they were targeted because they are gay. The July 9 incident has prompted two mass kissing demonstrations at the plaza.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has disputed Aune’s and Jones’ version of the events, saying their behavior was lewd and more was involved than a “simple kiss of the cheek.”

A group of men kicked him and slashed him with knives for being a “batty boy” – a slang term for gay men – after he left a party before dawn in October 2006. They sliced his throat, torso, and back, hissed anti-gay epithets, and left him for dead on a Kingston corner.

“It gets like five, six o’clock, my heart begins to race. I just need to go home, I start to get nervous,” said the 36-year-old outside the secret office of Jamaica’s sole gay rights group. Like many other gays, Sherman won’t give his full name for fear of retribution.

Despite the easygoing image propagated by tourist boards, gays and their advocates agree that Jamaica is by far the most hostile island toward homosexuals in the already conservative Caribbean. They say gays, especially those in poor communities, suffer frequent abuse. But they have little recourse because of rampant anti-gay stigma and a sodomy law banning sex between men in Jamaica and 10 other former British colonies in the Caribbean.

It is impossible to say just how common gay bashing attacks like the one against Sherman are in Jamaica – their tormentors are sometimes the police themselves. But many homosexuals in Jamaica say homophobia is pervasive across the sun-soaked island, from the pulpit to the floor of the Parliament.

Hostility toward gays has reached such a level that four months ago, gay advocates in New York City launched a short-lived boycott against Jamaica at the site of the Stonewall Inn, where demonstrations launched the gay-rights movement in 1969. In its 2008 report, the U.S. State Department also notes that gays have faced death and arson threats, and are hesitant to report incidents against them because of fear.

For gays, the reality of this enduring hostility is loneliness and fear, and sometimes even murder.

Andrew, a 36-year-old volunteer for an AIDS education program, said he was driven from the island after his ex-lover was killed for being gay – which police said was just a robbery gone wrong. He moved to the U.K. for several years, but returned to Jamaica in 2008 for personal reasons he declined to disclose.

“I’m living in fear on a day-to-day basis,” he said softly during a recent interview in Kingston. “In the community where my ex-lover was killed, people will say to me when I’m passing on the street, they will make remarks like ‘boom-boom-boom’ or ‘batty boy fi dead.’ I don’t feel free walking on the streets.”

Many in this highly Christian nation perceive homosexuality as a sin, and insist violence against gays is blown out of proportion by gay activists. Some say Jamaica tolerates homosexuality as long as it is not advertised – a tropical version of former President Bill Clinton’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy for the U.S. military.

Jamaica’s most prominent evangelical pastor, Bishop Herro Blair, said he sympathizes with those who face intolerance, but that homosexuals themselves are actually behind most of the attacks reported against them.

“Among themselves, homosexuals are extremely jealous,” said Blair during a recent interview. “But some of them do cause a reaction by their own behaviors, for, in many people’s opinions, homosexuality is distasteful.”

Other church leaders have accused gays of flaunting their behavior to “recruit” youngsters, or called for them to undergo “redemptive work” to break free of their sexual orientation.

Perhaps playing to anti-gay constituents, politicians routinely rail against homosexuals. During a parliamentary session in February, lawmaker Ernest Smith of the ruling Jamaica Labor Party stressed that gays were “brazen,” “abusive,” and “violent,” and expressed anxiety that the police force was “overrun by homosexuals.”

A few weeks later, Prime Minister Bruce Golding described gay advocates as “perhaps the most organized lobby in the world” and vowed to keep Jamaica’s “buggery law” – punishable by 10 years – on the books. During a BBC interview last year, Golding vowed to never allow gays in his Cabinet.

The dread of homosexuality is so all-encompassing that many Jamaican men refuse to get digital rectal examinations for prostate cancer, even those whose disease is advanced, said Dr. Trevor Tulloch of St. Andrews Hospital.

“Because it is a homophobic society, there’s such a fear of the sexual implications of having the exam that men won’t seek out help,” said Tulloch, adding Jamaica has a soaring rate of prostate cancer because men won’t be screened.

The anti-gay sentiment on this island of 2.8 million has perhaps become best known through Jamaican “dancehall,” a rap-reggae music hybrid that often has raunchy, violent themes. Some reggae rappers, including Bounty Killer and Elephant Man, depend on gay-bashing songs to rouse concert-goers.

“It stirs up the crowd to a degree that many performers feel they have to come up with an anti-gay song to incite the audience,” said Barry Chevannes, a professor of social anthropology at the University of the West Indies.

Brooklyn-based writer Staceyann Chin, a lesbian who fled her Caribbean homeland for New York more than a decade ago, stressed that violence in Jamaica is high – there were 1,611 killings last year, about 10 times more than the U.S. rate relative to population – but that it is “extraordinarily” high against gays.

“The macho ideal is celebrated, praised in Jamaica, while homosexuality is paralleled with pedophilia, rapists,” Chin said. “Markers that other people perceive as gay – they walk a certain way, wear tight pants, or are overly friendly with a male friend – make them targets. It’s a little pressure cooker waiting to pop.”

In 1996, when she was 20, Chin came out as lesbian on the Kingston UWI campus. She said she was ostracized by her peers, and one day was herded into a campus bathroom by a group of male students, who ripped off her clothes and sexually assaulted her.

“They told me what God wanted from me, that God made women to enjoy sex with men,” recalled Chin, a poet, performer and lecturer who closes her just-published memoir “The Other Side of Paradise” with her searing account of the attack.

Even in New York City, anti-gay Jamaican bigots sent her hate-filled e-mails after a 2007 appearance on Oprah Winfrey’s TV talk show to discuss homosexuality.

Chin said she doesn’t know if she would have the courage to come out now as a lesbian in Jamaica.

“The tensions are higher now. People are feeling very much that they have to declare camps,” she said.

Jamaican nationalism has always been tied in deeply with bugbears about masculinity, making for a “potent brew” where those who violate accepted standards of manliness are easy targets, said Scott Long of Human Rights Watch.

Long, head of a gay rights program at the New York-based group, pointed out that most other English-speaking islands in the region have tiny populations, where gays don’t come out and visible activism is limited.

“(But) what stands out about Jamaica is how absolutely, head-in-the-sand unwilling the authorities have been for years to acknowledge or address homophobic violence,” he said. “Most notably, three successive governments have completely, utterly, publicly refused even to talk about changing the buggery law – which expressly consigns gay people to second-class citizens and paints targets on their backs.”

Prominent Jamaican political activist Yvonne McCalla Sobers noted that social standing still protects gay islanders, especially in Kingston, where a quest for privacy and the fear of crime has driven many to live behind gated walls with key pad entry systems, 24-hour security and closed-circuit television monitoring. People with power and money who are not obviously gay are often protected, she said.

“My thought is there are far more men having sex with men in this country than you would ever think is happening,” Sobers said.

Many gays from poorer areas in Jamaica say they congregate in private to find safety and companionship. Once a month, they have underground church services at revolving locations across the island.

Sherman, meanwhile, is simply trying to move on with his life. But he said he will always remember how, after his attack, patrolmen roughly lifted his bloodied body out of their squad car when a man admonished them for aiding a “batty boy.” A woman shamed them into driving him to a hospital; they stuffed him in the car’s trunk.

“Being gay in Jamaica, it’s like, don’t tell anybody. Just keep it to yourself,” he said evenly, with a half smile.

About 250 people packed City Council chambers Tuesday and another 150 watched on televisions in the hallway or overflow rooms as officials briefly discussed the June 28 raid that left one man hospitalized with a serious head injury.

At one point during Tuesday’s meeting, someone in the audience called out for an apology.

Mayor Mike Moncrief then said: “If you want an apology from the mayor of Fort Worth: I am sorry about what happened in Fort Worth.” The crowd erupted in applause and stood.

The Texas Alcohol Beverage Commission and Fort Worth Police Department are investigating the raid, which was conducted jointly by their agencies.

Smaller marches wound through the capitals of heavily Catholic Poland and in Croatia, where counterdemonstrators shouted anti-gay and nationalist slogans.

In Rome, costumed demonstrators carrying rainbow flags and signs reading “freedom for all” attacked the conservative government of Premier Silvio Berlusconi.

They demanded rights for same-sex couples and the recognition of gay marriage.

Activists dressed as fake clergy with colorful hats and signs reading “No Vatican” protested what they say is the church’s excessive influence on Italy’s policies.

Organizers said Saturday was not a special day for gay pride but that most such parades are organized around June 28, marking the 1969 landmark Stonewall riots in New York, considered the birth of the gay rights movement.

In Warsaw, hundreds of gay and lesbian activists marched, also calling for legal unions between same-sex couples.

About 1,500 demonstrators marched along Warsaw’s main Marszalkowska Street under escort, police said. Several dozen right-wing youths shouting anti-gay invective confronted the parade near the Parliament building, but there were no confrontations, police said.

Some previous gay demonstrations have been marked by violence.

Homosexuals were a taboo subject in Poland under communism. Since the 1990 democratic changes, gays have been campaigning for equal rights, but marriage in Poland is only legal between a man and a woman.

In Croatia, another mostly Roman Catholic country, about 500 gay activists marched through Zagreb.

No violence was reported, but about 50 people held a counterdemonstration and shouted anti-gay slogans. One was led away by police after trying to break through a cordon that authorities had created around the Gay Pride parade to protect it.

The National Equality Rally was billed as the first national demonstration since 2000 for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender rights and the first held outside Washington. The marchers displayed signs from dozens of organizations and photos of people said to have been killed because of their sexual orientation.

The march ended with a rally in front of Independence Hall, where rainbow-colored umbrellas came in handy in a steady drizzle. The crowd listened to music from a band and a chorale singing the national anthem. A cheer rose at the sound of the bell from the spire of the building where the Constitution was drafted.

Speakers called for support for gay marriage, more money for AIDS research and an end to workplace discrimination and the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, which prohibits gays in the military from being open about their sexual orientation. One participant wearing a fatigue jacket and pink slacks held a sign saying “Do ask, do tell.”

“We don’t wilt, and we don’t melt. We are here for equality now,” Malcolm Lazin, executive director of the Equality Forum local gay rights group, which sponsored the event, told the crowd.

Bryan Berchok, of Upper Bucks County, Pa., listened to the speeches as he held his 4-year-old adoptive son, Shawn, whose face was painted to resemble the black mask of Spider-Man’s evil alter ego. He and his partner of 15 years, John Ferraro, said it was difficult and expensive to try to get the same rights afforded to married couples.

“We worry how things would work out if one of us was not able to care for Shawn,” Berchok said. “It’s just a little scary.”

Allison Woolbert, who chairs the Interweave gay rights group of southern New Jersey, said she wanted more attention given to health care for transgender people, who she said often are refused care by medical personnel and whose medications are not covered in health plans.

A few counter-demonstrators held religious signs at the margins of the gathering, and one preached with a bullhorn as the marchers filed past.

At the time of the last national rally, nine years ago, Vermont had just passed the first civil union law in the country. Now, gay marriage is legal in Vermont, Connecticut, Iowa and Massachusetts, with bills pending in other states. California briefly allowed it last year, but a voter initiative repealed it.

Speakers on Sunday noted that Independence Hall was the site of the first Reminder Day picket for gay rights on July 4, 1965. That gathering attracted about 40 people, but about 150 attended the fifth one in 1969, just after the landmark Stonewall riots in New York, considered the birth of the U.S. gay rights movement.

Nurit Shein, executive director of the Mazzoni Center, a local health services office serving the gay community, told Sunday’s crowd that gays will be “seen” and “counted.”

“Equal means equal,” Shein said, “not separate, not less.”

The American Civil Liberties Union says the 2006 state law is unconstitutional. It was approved with bipartisan support in response to an anti-gay church that has protested at funerals of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“Although the Legislature may have had honorable motives in passing the law, this case is a textbook example of what happens when the state gives police officers unchecked power to arrest people who express unpopular views,” said Michael Steinberg, legal director for the ACLU of Michigan.

The ACLU filed the federal lawsuit in Bay City against Clare County and two sheriff’s deputies on behalf of a 64-year-old Army veteran Lewis Lowden and his late wife, Jean.

They were arrested in September 2007 in Harrison, about 140 miles northwest of Detroit, on their way to the burial of Army Cpl. Todd Motley, 23, of Clare, who died in Muqdadiyah of wounds suffered when a bomb exploded near his vehicle during combat.

The suit, which seeks unspecified damages from the county, says the Lowdens were close family friends. Jean Lowden home-schooled Motley in high school and Lewis Lowden took him on fishing and camping trips.

Lewis Lowden for years had taped homemade political signs to the inside windows of his van criticizing the president and government policies, the lawsuit said. They made statements such as “Impeach Cheney-Bush” and “G.W. Bush: The Reason Why Murphy Wrote His Law.”

No one complained about the signs when the Lowdens arrived for the funeral, according to the suit.

But during the funeral procession, viewed by hundreds of onlookers, the Lowdens were pulled over and arrested. They missed the burial service. In a statement released by the ACLU, Lewis Lowden said he “can never express the shame and humiliation” he and his wife felt when they were arrested.

Criminal charges were later dropped; the ACLU said Motley’s family had asked prosecutors to drop them.

A message seeking comment from the Clare County Sheriff’s Department was not immediately returned Wednesday.

The federal government and at least 37 states have enacted funeral-protest laws in response to the Westboro Baptist Church’s picketing of military funerals. The Rev. Fred Phelps and his followers claim U.S. combat deaths are God’s punishment for the nation’s tolerance of homosexuality. Some states’ laws have been struck down.

Michigan’s law makes it a felony to “disturb, disrupt or adversely affect” a funeral within 500 feet of the ceremony or procession. The ACLU says it violates free speech rights and is unconstitutionally vague.

“This is a law you would expect in a totalitarian regime but not in the United States,” Steinberg said. He said the law could have been written narrowly to bar “true disruptions” of a funeral such as loud noise keeping people from being able to listen to the ceremony.

One of the law’s sponsors, Republican Sen. Jud Gilbert of Algonac, said the Lowdens’ case is “very unique.” He said lawmakers were trying to stop protesters from hurling insults at grieving families and did not think of the scenario that played out in Harrison.

“We recognize the right of free speech, that people have a right to demonstrate,” Gilbert said. “If something is not constitutional, I hope the court would give guidance of how we could meet their test.”

Phelps runs an organization called Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka and his followers regularly stage noisy protests against homosexuality throughout the US.

Westboro’s members are made up mostly of Phelps’ relatives. Although it professes to be Baptist, it is not affiliated with any national Baptist group.

Westboro operates Web sites including GodHatesFags and GodHatesAmerica and has been described as a cult.

Phelps and the church first came to national attention when he organized a protest by his followers outside the 1998 funeral for Matthew Shepard.

“The Laramie Project” is based on the Shepard murder. It will be performed Friday night at the Central Studio arts venue at Queen Mary’s College.

The Phelps group announced its plan protest on its Web site under the headline “God Hates England; Your Queen Is A Whore.”

Ben Summerskill, chief executive of the British LGBT rights group Stonewall, called the threatened protest “distressing.”

“The Laramie Project is a very serious play about a young man who was beaten to death just because he was gay. To regard that as a cause for celebration will make a lot of people both gay and straight feel very uncomfortable,” he told The Telegraph.

The local Member of Parliament, Maria Miller (C), said that she has contacted the Home Secretary to see what action the Government may be considering. Under British law, hate groups may be banned from entering the country.

Miller cited Westboro’s “highly inflammatory language and behavior.”

“The most important thing is that a production that is trying to promote tolerance goes ahead and that’s what I’m focusing on achieving,” she told The Telegraph.

Westboro regularly pickets throughout the US, but often threatens demonstrations without showing up.

The group was a no-how at President Barrack Obama’s inauguration despite announcing it would protest. It said last year it would demonstrate in two Canadian provinces but when the government moved to block entry into Canada, was able only to sneak into one area.

LGBT rights activists have been urging a boycott of the Manchester Grand Hyatt over its owner, Douglas Manchester’s contribution of $125,000 to the Proposition 8 campaign.

Rights groups, San Diego City Councilman Todd Gloria, labor leader Lorena Gonzalez and six others sent Clinton a letter, urging him to cancel his appearance at the annual convention of the International Franchise Association on Sunday.

A spokesperson for the former President said prior to the demonstration that  Clinton planned to honor his commitment to give the speech.

Several groups have canceled conventions at the hotel – costing Manchester’s facility an estimated $2 million.

Among those who bailed out of meeting at the hotel are conventions for the International Foundation of Employee Benefits, the San Diego Board of Realtors, the American Assn. of Law Schools and the California Nurses Association.

The California State Bar Association is under pressure to cancel its annual convention at the hotel.

Clinton has a mixed record on LGBT issues.  He signed the federal Defense of Marriage Act which bars the US government from recognizing same-sex couples, saying at the time he saw it as a way of stopped a proposed amendment to the US Constitution to ban same-sex marriage.

Clinton also signed “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” which bans gays from serving openly in the military.  He said that the bill was a compromise to an all-out ban on gays that would result in a witch hunt of homosexuals in the armed forces.

Protesters marched in front of the hotel shouting for equality.  About a dozen San Diego police officers were on the scene, but reported no incidents.

The California Supreme Court will hear arguments next month that the vote for Prop 8 was unconstitutional.

Warren was invited to give the keynote address at the church, but gay rights advocates said he belied King’s message of inclusiveness. His participation at the event and his invitation to deliver the invocation at President-elect Barrack Obama’s inauguration on Tuesday has infuriated gays and lesbians.

Warren, the pastor and founder of Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif., publicly supported California’s Proposition 8, which amended the state Constitution to ban gay marriage.

Dr. King never publicly spoke about gay rights, but his 1963 March on Washington was organized by Bayard Rustin, an openly gay black man. King’s widow, Coretta Scott King, often appeared at LGBT rights rallies before her death in 2006.

In 2003, she invited the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force to take part in observances of the 40th anniversary of the March on Washington and Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream” speech.

It was the first time that an LGBT rights group had been invited to a major event of the African American community and drew the ire of some of the other speakers.

King said her husband supported the quest for equality by gays and reminded her critics that the 1963 March on Washington was organized by Rustin.

In March 2004, she told a university audience that same-sex marriage is a civil rights issue and denounced a proposed amendment to the Constitution ban it.

“Gay and lesbian people have families, and their families should have legal protection, whether by marriage or civil union,” she said in a speech at The Richard Stockton College in Pomona, New Jersey.

The protest against the appearance by Warren at Ebenezer Baptist Church was the second day of protests over the involvement of Warren in the inauguration.

On Sunday about 100 people, many waving rainbow flags, demonstrated in California front of Saddleback Church.

Obama’s invitation to Warren to say the invocation at Tuesday’s inauguration led to criticism by many gays who had supported the President-elect’s campaign.

That anger led the inaugural committee to invite Gene Robinson, the openly gay Episcopal Bishop of New Hampshire, to appear at Sunday’s official inaugural kickoff at the Lincoln Memorial.

Robinson asked the crowd to pray for “understanding that our president is a human being and not a messiah.”

“Bless us with tears – for a world in which over a billion people exist on less than a dollar a day, where young women from many lands are beaten and raped for wanting an education, and thousands die daily from malnutrition, malaria, and AIDS,” he said in his invocation.

“Bless us with anger – at discrimination, at home and abroad, against refugees and immigrants, women, people of color, gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.”

But the appearance before an estimated 400,000 was not covered by HBO, which had bought the television rights to the massive concert.

Several blocks away at 17th and Constitution, a small group of anti-gay protesters demonstrated but followers of Rev. Fred Phelps who had said they intended to protest were visibly absent. Phelps is the leader of the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas which is largely made up of family members and routinely pickets LGBT-positive events.

In his address to the throng that spread from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to the Washington Monument Obama declared that “Anything is possible in America.”

“Despite the enormity of the task that lies ahead – I stand here today as hopeful as ever that the United States of America will endure – that the dream of our founders will live on in our time,” the President-elect said.

Among the stellar lineup of stars was Washington’s Gay Men’s Chorus.

Obama arrived in Washington on Saturday, ending a majestic train ride across the frigid mid-Atlantic seaboard that recreated the triumphant journey of President-elect Abraham Lincoln.

Celebratory crowds braved subfreezing weather to salute Obama along his 137-mile journey to the nation’s capital from Philadelphia.

On board the “Obama Express” were several dozen “everyday Americans” who Obama had met on the campaign trail.

Among them were Lisa Hazirjian and her Michelle Kaiser of Cleveland.

Hazirjian, a Case Western Reserve University history professor, recruited volunteers from the gay community in Ohio and Pennsylvania. She worked full-time for the Obama campaign in Cleveland over the summer and fall.

Hazirjian became involved in LGBT civil rights after she was denied a job at another university when she sought domestic partnership benefits for Kaiser.

Both women, along with Robinson and other gay rights leaders also will attend the inauguration.