Jodie Foster reveals she's gay, suggests she's retiring

BY CHRISTY LEMIRE, AP MOVIE WRITER

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. -- Jodie Foster came out without really coming out, and suggested she was retiring from acting without exactly saying so, in a long, breathless and rambling speech at Sunday night's Golden Globe Awards.

Foster took the stage as this year's winner of the Cecil B. DeMille Lifetime Achievement Award, which had been announced previously. But her acceptance speech was anything but predictable as the veteran actress seized control of what is every year a noisy, boozy ballroom; the crowd of A-listers quickly quieted down as it became apparent that she had something serious and important to say.

Click here to read more.

Video | Jodie Foster comes out at Golden Globes

A visibly nervous Jodie Foster comes out at the Golden Globe awards. Sort of. Maybe. It's hard to know exactly what she said -- at the very moment she "put it out there loud and proud" NBC audio cut off.

"I am ... uh ... single. Yes I am. I am single. No, I am kidding. But I'm not really kidding, but I'm kind of kidding. Thank you for the enthusiasm. Can I get a wolf whistle or something. [Audio drops and her pal Mel Gibson is seen helping her out, whistling.] ... be a big coming out speech tonight. I already did my coming out about a thousand years ago back in the stone age," Foster said.

'In Gay We Trust': Four women go topless to protest the Vatican (with AP video)

BY NICOLE WINFIELD, ASSOCIATED PRESS

VATICAN CITY -- Four women have gone topless in St. Peter's Square to protest the Vatican's opposition to gay marriage.

Police quickly took the women away Sunday, and the pope appeared not to have been disturbed as he delivered his traditional prayer from his studio window overlooking the piazza.

On their bare backs, the women had painted slogans "In Gay We Trust," and "Shut Up." One of them, Inna Shevchenko, said: "Today we are here to protest against homophobia."

The small demonstration coincided with a march in Paris that is expected to draw hundreds of thousands of people to protest the French president's plan to legalize gay marriage and let gay couples adopt children.

French Catholic bishops and other religious leaders have strongly opposed the proposal, and the Vatican has backed them.

Aaron Swartz, Reddit co-founder who hanged himself in New York, wrote about sexual identity

Aaron Swartz, a co-founder of Reddit who helped create RSS, hanged himself on Friday in Brooklyn, N.Y.

On Sept. 8, 2009, Swartz posted an entry on his personal blog titled, "Why I Am Not Gay." He concluded his post about sexual identity and culture with this:

So that’s why I’m not gay. I hook up with people. I enjoy it. Sometimes they’re men, sometimes they’re women. I don’t see why it needs to be any more complicated than that.

Here's the Associated Press report about Swartz's death at 26:

Reddit co-founder dies in NY weeks before trial

BY VERENA DOBNIK, ASSOCIATED PRESS

NEW YORK -- The family of a Reddit co-founder who committed suicide weeks before he was to go on trial on federal charges that he stole millions of scholarly articles is blaming prosecutors for his death.

Aaron Swartz hanged himself in his Brooklyn apartment Friday night, his family and authorities said. The 26-year-old had fought to make online content free to the public and as a teenager helped create RSS, a family of Web feed formats used to gather updates from blogs, news headlines, audio and video for users.

In 2011, he was charged with stealing millions of scientific journals from a computer archive at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in an attempt to make them freely available.

He had pleaded not guilty, and his federal trial was to begin next month. If convicted, he faced decades in prison and a fortune in fines.

Click here to read more.

Hundreds of thousands in France converge on Eiffel Tower in gay marriage protest

BY LORI HINNANT, ASSOCIATED PRESS

PARIS -- Holding aloft ancient flags and young children, hundreds of thousands of people converged Sunday on the Eiffel Tower to protest the French president's plan to legalize gay marriage and thus allow same-sex couples to adopt and conceive children.

The opposition to President Francois Hollande's plan has underscored divisions among the secular-but-Catholic French, especially more traditional rural areas versus urban enclaves. But while polls show the majority of French still support legalizing gay marriage, that backing gets more lukewarm when children come into play.

The protest march started at three points across Paris, filling boulevards throughout the city as demonstrators walked six kilometers (3 miles) to the grounds of France's most recognizable monument. Paris police estimated the crowd at 340,000, making it one of the largest demonstrations in Paris since an education protest in 1984.

Click here to read more.