Yesterday, Washington, D.C.’s city council voted to legalize same sex marriages performed elsewhere in the United States. The decision was almost unanimous except for the nay vote of former Mayor Marion Barry, who represents a district in the southeastern quadrant of the city. “All hell will break loose,” said Barry, who is fiercely opposing the vote. “We may have a civil war,” he added. “The Black community is just adamant against this.” Outside of the chamber, a group of protesting ministers from D.C. and the Maryland suburbs caused an uproar after the decision. “What you’ve got to understand is 98 percent of my constituents are Black and we don’t have but a handful of openly gay residents,” Barry said. “Secondly, at least 70 percent of those who express themselves to me about this are opposed to anything dealing with this issue. The ministers think it is a sin, and I have to be sensitive to that.” Security guards were called in to calm the protests. Gay activists in D.C. are calling Barry, once a strong ally, a “hypocrite.” They say he is siding with protesters only because its politically convenient right for him now.

See the video here.

The university community was relieved when the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) announced on April 14 that missing Howard University student James Duncan III had been found. According to a university press release, Duncan was located Tuesday unharmed in an undisclosed location.  More here.

A mother and stepfather are charged with starving their teen

. A father and stepmother were charged with withholding their 14-year-old daughter’s food and water so drastically that she weighed only 48 pounds, authorities said. Jon Pomeroy, 43, and his wife, Rebecca Long, 44, could face as much as four years in prison if convicted of criminal mistreatment, prosecutor’s spokesman Dan Donohoe said. The couple was released on bail late Monday after the charges were brought. The girl was removed from the family home near Carnation, about 20 miles east of Seattle, in August after a neighbor called child welfare authorities. The veteran detective who investigated “said this is the worst case he’s ever seen, especially for an ongoing pattern of abuse over several years,” county sheriff’s spokesman John Urquhart said. According to prosecutors, Long confirmed to a deputy that she considered the girl a behavior problem and restricted her water as discipline. The woman said she had been home-schooling the girl and her 12-year-old brother for four years. The girl, who is 4 feet 7 inches tall, told authorities that she was given primarily toast to eat and only about 6 ounces of water per day. She said her stepmother even watched when she brushed her teeth to make sure she didn’t drink extra water. According to an affidavit filed by a deputy investigating the case, the girl was forced to sleep in the same room with Long after her stepmother caught her drinking water from the toilet during the night. The girl told the deputy that she didn’t use the faucet because she didn’t want to waken her stepmother. In response, the affidavit says Long put a heavy dresser in front of the door of the bedroom they shared to keep her stepdaughter from avoiding her punishment.

The Los Angeles Times top-10 list of movies that best reflect L.A. city life and culture is filled with Black star power. Among the contributions are: Jackie Brown, starring Pam Grier and Samuel L. Jackson; Boyz N the Hood, starring Cuba Gooding Jr., Laurence Fishburne and Ice Cube; Beverly Hills Cop, starring Eddie Murphy; and Collateral, starring Jamie Foxx. The movies included were all released within the past 25 years and feature the L.A. landscape as a “main character” in the script.

“Lakeview Terrace” minimizes its Madea factor

Apparently, Hollywood can only accommodate one crazy Black woman character at a time. Samuel L. Jackson’s new film Lakeview Terrace, co-starring Ray’s Kerry Washington, cut a scene in which Washington appears to “lose it” on camera. Washington, who plays the wife in a couple terrorized by their neighbor, pretends to seduce the next-door character, Jackson, but then pulls a knife on him. “It got removed,” she says. “The producers felt like, at that point in the film, my character was the only sane one and they needed her to stay sane in the mix. She was losing it.” Madea would surely be disappointed with the decision.

Twenty years worth of hate mail – directed at Black men who married or dated White women – got David Tuason almost four years in prison. Read more at BET.com/News.

HBCU Spelman gets $17 million gift.

Historically Black Spelman College in Atlanta got a surprise package in the form of a $17 million gift to fund an endowment for that will help acquaint its students to the rest of the world. “In the context of an increasingly global economy and a world made smaller by technology, it is more important than ever that students, faculty and staff are prepared for active engagement with the international community,” said Spelman President Beverly Daniel Tatum in a statement. She said that the anonymous gift will help the all-women’s college establish Gordon-Zeto Endowed Fund for International Initiatives, named after Nora Gordon (the first Spelman graduate to teach in the Congo) and Flora Zeto (the first Congolese student to graduate from Spelman). Also covered under the endowment is the Gordon-Zeto Dean for International Inititiatives, who will be the senior administrator of Spelman’s international programs; the Nora Gordon Scholars Program, which will support study abroad programs for Pell grant eligible students, giving first priority to those interested in studying in Africa; and a travel fund to support short-term study trips by students and faculty.

A March for Jobs and Freedom. When hundreds of thousands of people descended on the capital for the March on Washington 45 years ago this week, it was the largest political gathering the nation had ever seen. The event was later recognized as the tipping point in the fight for civil rights. See the pictures here. 

Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick’s poltical future now rests in the hands of the governor.  Gov. Jennifer Granholm said on Tuesday that she may use a provision in the state constitution to have him removed from office for misconduct, The Associated Press reports. Read more about the city counci’s appeal to the governor and the charges Kilpatrick faces at BET.com/News.

Skin head gets 25 years for murdering a Black man. The justice system is finally bringing some closure to the nearly 20-year-old murder of a Black man in Philly. Thomas Gibison, a White supremacist, was convicted of conspiracy in the 1989 shooting death of Aaron Wood and was sentenced to up to 25 years in prison, The Associated Press reports. A friend of Gibison testified during the trial that they went to North Philadelphia to find a Black man to kill so they could earn a White supremacist tattoo. Gibison already is serving time in prison for unrelated weapons offenses charges.

March on Washington anniversary remembered. Forty-five years ago, thousands descended on D.C., and changed America forever. See the photos here.