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A delegation of the European Union to Albania this week condemned an Albanian minister’s statement that gays should be beaten with truncheons.

The statement from the EU group said the delegation was “surprised and deeply concerned” with the March 22 comments from Albania Defense Minister Ekrem Spahiu.

Faced with a crushing debt and the prospect that he’d have to close the gay nightclub he started 21 years ago, John Shockey popped the words “Save Trumans” on his marquee.

The Weinstein Company has announced that “Bully,” the award-winning documentary about the epidemic of school bullying in the United States, will open in theaters on March 30 as “unrated” after nearly 500,000 people signed a Change.org petition demanding that the Motion Picture Association of America remove the “R” rating given to the film.



“I am happy ‘Bully’ will maintain its authenticity and will be an accurate portrayal of what thousands of kids experience every day,” said Katy Butler, a bullied high school student from Michigan who launched the petition drive.

A teenager who’s campaigning to make it easier for children to see an upcoming documentary about bullying, the producers of the NBC musical drama “Smash” and Lady Gaga were among the winners of Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation media awards announced this weekend.

ABC’s “Dancing With The Stars,” the popular Spanish-language TV programs “Caso Cerrado” and “Primer Impacto,” and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Tony Kushner’s recent work “The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures” also were among the honorees recognized March 24 at a ceremony in New York.

The Iowa Attorney General’s office is continuing its refusal to issue a fetal death certificate naming two women as the parents of a stillborn child.

The office maintains that it made the correct decision when it erased one mother’s name from the death certificate for the child even though the two women are legally married in Iowa.

Academy Award-winning actor Jane Fonda will portray former first lady Nancy Reagan in a drama called “Butler.”

Variety reported that Fonda will appear in several scenes in the film as Reagan, while other actors still are in negotiations for key roles.

Albanian gay organizations this past week announced plans to hold the country's first ever gay Pride parade in Tirana on May 17, a move immediately slammed by a government minister, according to AFP.

"May 17 will be a special day … the LGBT flag will be raised for the first time in Tirana," Altin Hazizaj of the Pink Embassy organization said in a statement to the media.

Just days after rehearsals began, a Catholic school in New Jersey has canceled its production of “The Laramie Project.” It’s a play based on the 1998 murder in Wyoming of gay college student Matthew Shepard.

Officials at Notre Dame High School in Lawrence say the play was originally seen as an appropriate vehicle to address issues of respect and tolerance. But they say as calls came in they realized different people “will see radically different messages than the ones we intended” and they didn’t want a “damaging controversy.”

A prominent lawmaker and gay rights activist in Nepal says he has asked Facebook to include a third option for people who do not identify themselves as male or female.

Sunilbabu Pant said he has written to Facebook founders Mark Zuckerberg and Chris Hughes asking an option as "third gender" or "others" when signing up because people who do not identify as male or female continue to be sidelined by Facebook's options.

The U.S. Justice Department on March 26 asked the federal court system to speed its review of a challenge to the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act.

The Justice Department made the request of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, which earlier this year in a different case upheld a district court finding that the anti-gay Prop 8 ballot measure is unconstitutional.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection on March 27 will publish proposed new regulations on when members of a family residing in one household and traveling together on their return to the United States may make a joint declaration for all members of the family.

The government wants to expand the definition of the term “members of a family residing in one household” to include domestic relationships, which would allow more U.S. returning residents to file a joint customs declaration for articles acquired abroad.

National LGBT Health Awareness Week takes place through March 30, with organizers asking people to share their health care stories online.

The week, sponsored by the National Coalition for LGBT Health, coincides with Supreme Court oral arguments over the constitutionality of the federal Affordable Care Act.