The nation in brief

QUOTE OF THE DAY “Now we’re equal to everybody in Hawaii that’s married, everybody in the nation and the world that’s legally married, so that’s an honor.” Keola Akana, who along with his partner, Ethan Wung, was one of the first to get married early Monday after Hawaii’s gay-marriage law took effect Article, 2APolice: Teen flashed gun at Ohio school

TOLEDO, Ohio - A 14-year-old student flashed a pellet gun inside an Ohio high school, setting off a lockdown and short standoff Monday in a hallway before he was taken into custody and charged, police and a witness said.

The student was kicked out of class and sent to a room for students serving in-school suspensions, where he told a school police officer that he had a gun and pulled it partly out his book bag, said Kayla Williams, a student inside the room.

The boy was being held at a juvenile jail and was charged as a juvenile with making terroristic threats and illegal conveyance of a dangerous ordnance. The Associated Press is not naming the suspect because of his age.

Judge rejects gay couple’s divorce filing

JACKSON, Miss. - A Mississippi judge on Monday refused to grant a divorce to a lesbian couple who got married in California, saying the marriage wasn’t recognized under state law, according to the woman who filed and her lawyer.

Lauren Beth Czekala-Chatham, who filed for the divorce in September in north Mississippi’s DeSoto County, said in a telephone interview Monday that the judge seemed sympathetic and that she plans to appeal the ruling.

Czekala-Chatham, 51, a credit analyst and mother of two teenage sons from an earlier heterosexual marriage, said she was “a little bit disappointed.”

Democrat Attorney General Jim Hood’s office had argued that Mississippi can’t grant a divorce in a marriage it doesn’t recognize. Hood’s office said in a motion to intervene Nov. 15 that Mississippi “has no obligation to give effect to California laws that are contrary to Mississippi’s expressly stated public policy.”

Czekala-Chatham and Dana Ann Melancon traveled to San Francisco to get married in 2008. They bought a house together in Mississippi the next year, but their relationship soured.

Court clerk defends gay-marriage licenses

HARRISBURG, Pa. - A suburban Philadelphia court clerk who defied Pennsylvania’s ban on same-sex marriage by signing licenses for scores of gay couples urged the state’s highest court Monday to overturn an order that required him to stop.

Lawyers for D. Bruce Hanes, clerk of the Montgomery County Orphans’ Court, filed a brief in his appeal to the state Supreme Court.

The state Health Department took Hanes to court for violating the law after he began issuing licenses to same-sex couples in July. In September, Commonwealth Court Judge Dan Pellegrini ordered him to stop signing the licenses. By then, Hanes had signed 174 licenses.

Hanes said the court order forced him to violate his oath by complying with a law he regards as unconstitutional. He cites the U.S. Supreme Court’s June ruling that the federal government could not deny benefits to married same-sex couples who live in states that allow same-sex marriage, as well as state Attorney General Kathleen Kane’s subsequent refusal to defend the law against a federal court challenge because she considers it unconstitutional.

Hanes also contends the Health Department lacked legal standing to take him to court.

Newtown shooting 911 tapes to be shared

HARTFORD, Conn. - A Connecticut state prosecutor said Monday he is dropping his bid to continue withholding recordings of 911 calls from the mass shooting last year at a Newtown elementary school. The tapes are expected to be released to the public Wednesday.

Last week, a judge ordered the prosecutor, State’s Attorney Stephen Sedensky, to provide the recordings to The Associated Press, affirming a ruling by the state’s Freedom of Information Commission that the calls are not exempt from public-information laws.

The tapes to be released Wednesday include seven calls that were made to Newtown police, and do not include calls that went to state police dispatchers. The tapes will be made available at the Danbury offices of attorneys for the town of Newtown, according to a statement from the first selectman’s office.

Front Section, Pages 4 on 12/03/2013

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