Critics seek to delay NYC sugary drinks size limit

NEW YORK (AP) — Opponents are pressing to delay enforcement of the city's novel plan to crack down on supersized, sugary drinks, saying businesses shouldn't have to spend millions of dollars to comply until a court rules on whether the measure is legal.

With the rule set to take effect March 12, beverage industry, restaurant and other business groups have asked a judge to put it on hold at least until there's a ruling on their lawsuit seeking to block it altogether. The measure would bar many eateries from selling high-sugar drinks in cups or containers bigger than 16 ounces.

"It would be a tremendous waste of expense, time, and effort for our members to incur all of the harm and costs associated with the ban if this court decides that the ban is illegal," Chong Sik Le, president of the New York Korean-American Grocers Association, said in court papers filed Friday.

City lawyers are fighting the lawsuit and oppose postponing the restriction, which the city Board of Health approved in September. They said Tuesday they expect to prevail.

"The obesity epidemic kills nearly 6,000 New Yorkers each year. We see no reason to delay the Board of Health's reasonable and legal actions to combat this major, growing problem," Mark Muschenheim, a city attorney, said in a statement.

Another city lawyer, Thomas Merrill, has said officials believe businesses have had enough time to get ready for the new rule. He has noted that the city doesn't plan to seek fines until June.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg and other city officials see the first-of-its-kind limit as a coup for public health. The city's obesity rate is rising, and studies have linked sugary drinks to weight gain, they note.

"This is the biggest step a city has taken to curb obesity," Bloomberg said when the measure passed.

Soda makers and other critics view the rule as an unwarranted intrusion into people's dietary choices and an unfair, uneven burden on business. The restriction won't apply at supermarkets and many convenience stores because the city doesn't regulate them.

While the dispute plays out in court, "the impacted businesses would like some more certainty on when and how they might need to adjust operations," American Beverage Industry spokesman Christopher Gindlesperger said Tuesday.

Those adjustments are expected to cost the association's members about $600,000 in labeling and other expenses for bottles, Vice President Mike Redman said in court papers. Reconfiguring "16-ounce" cups that are actually made slightly bigger, to leave room at the top, is expected to take cup manufacturers three months to a year and cost them anywhere from more than $100,000 to several millions of dollars, Foodservice Packaging Institute President Lynn Dyer said in court documents.

Movie theaters, meanwhile, are concerned because beverages account for more than 20 percent of their overall profits and about 98 percent of soda sales are in containers greater than 16 ounces, according to Robert Sunshine, executive director of the National Association of Theatre Owners of New York State.

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Follow Jennifer Peltz at http://twitter.com/jennpeltz

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L.A. mayoral candidate Greuel vows to expand police and fire ranks

Mayoral hopeful Wendy Greuel laid out an expensive plan Tuesday to expand the ranks of the Los Angeles police and fire departments by about 20% over seven years — a goal her critics dismissed as virtually impossible given the city's current finances.

At a news conference outside the headquarters of the city firefighters' union, which has endorsed her, Greuel said she set her goal of 12,000 police officers — up from the current level of about 10,000 — based on a recommendation by former L.A. Police Chief William J. Bratton. She also promised to expand crime-prevention programs, create a "public safety trust fund" for emergencies, and improve fire and medical emergency response times, which have increased due to staff cuts during the economic downturn.

"We can do all of this without raising taxes," Greuel said. "It's about cutting waste and it's about setting priorities."

Greuel's mayoral opponents immediately challenged the feasibility of her plan and the mechanism she proposed to pay for it. The average annual cost of a city police officer is about $149,000 including pension and health benefits — meaning 2,000 additional police officers alone could add hundreds of millions of dollars to the annual budget.

INTERACTIVE MAPS: Past L.A. mayoral elections

The city already faces a deficit of nearly $220 million in the coming fiscal year. Greuel did not identify specific spending cuts to pay for her plan, beyond her disputed claim that she can wrest $160 million in savings from waste she has found in audits as city controller. Her aides declined to provide a cost estimate for her plan.

Greuel said she hoped to fund the additional police and firefighters by devoting 20% of future city revenue growth to her hiring goals. But it was unclear what, if any, money would be available after the city meets its other obligations. The city's chief budget officer, Miguel Santana, has projected about 3% revenue growth next year, at a time when the city expenditures are rising 4% to 5%.

"The good news is our revenue is growing — and it's been growing for the last few years and will continue to grow," Santana said Tuesday. "The challenge is our expenditures are growing at a faster rate."

City Councilman Eric Garcetti, a top rival who has challenged as "fake" Greuel's claim to have found $160 million in "waste, fraud and abuse," said her police and fire plan is equally unrealistic.

"Once again these numbers don't add up," Garcetti said, describing the plan as an "election year promise" disconnected from choices that city leaders will have to make to balance the budget. "Right now people are looking for us to get out of the tunnel.... My focus has been on response times and fire stations, not an arbitrary number of how many people will be on the force, but how the services actually get to" those in need.

Councilwoman Jan Perry said Greuel's plan was "a cut and paste job" of a proposal put out by 2005 mayoral candidate Bob Hertzberg, one of the controller's advisors. Throughout the campaign, Perry said, Greuel has failed to outline any viable solutions to the biggest financial threat facing the city: its pension liabilities.

In his 2005 campaign, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa promised to add 1,000 police officers. But as the recession hit and city revenues fell, Villaraigosa struggled to meet his goal — ultimately managing to add 800 officers for a total force of 10,023.

The police staffing additions came at a time when City Council members were making deep cuts to other city services and laying off employees to balance the city's books.

Greuel did not state a position on restoring $80 million a year in cuts to police overtime, a major priority for the Los Angeles Police Protective League, which also has endorsed her.

Tyler Izen, president of the Police Protective League, said those cuts have meant that between 500 to 700 officers must take time off from their patrols and other duties each month.

The league has long argued that it is more cost-effective to pay overtime than to add officers because of pension and benefit costs.

"Having our officers paid for their overtime, and not sent home, is the fastest way to put more officers on the street," Izen said.

Greuel has been critical of the Fire Department reductions, but Garcetti has noted that she voted for the first wave of cuts as a council member in 2009.

maeve.reston@latimes.com

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Ahmadinejad’s Ally Arrested in as Fight With Family Grows

TEHRAN — Iranian judicial authorities arrested a protégé of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Monday, the latest round in an escalating power struggle between Iran’s elected leader and the country’s most influential political family.

The Tehran prosecutor’s Web site announced the arrest of Saeed Mortazavi late Monday night, although it gave no official reason for the action.

The move follows the disclosure of a secret film by President Ahmadinejad on Monday in parliament, in which Mr. Mortazavi could be seen purportedly discussing a fraudulent business deal proposed by Fazel Larijani, 49, the youngest of the five brothers of the politically influential Larijani family.

The president’s disclosure of the film of the meeting caused an uproar in Iran, where allegations of corruption are usually made behind closed doors.

The ensuing arrest of Mr. Mortazavi, the president’s ally, heightens the intensifying stakes in the battle. Mr. Mortazavi has been controversial figure, known for closing dozens of reformist newspapers while he was a judge. The Canadian government has implicated him in the death of an Iran-Canadian photographer in 2003. And in 2010 a parliamentary report concluded that Mr. Mortazavi, while working as a prosecutor, shared responsibility for the death of three protesters in a police prison facility.

Most recently lawmakers forced his dismissal as the head of the vast Social Welfare Organization, only to have President Ahmadinejad reinstate him as caretaker.

Traveling to Egypt on the first visit of an Iranian president to that country since the 1979 Islamic revolution, Mr. Ahmadinejad condemned the arrest of Mr. Mortazavi, saying he had discovered a crime, but was now being punished.

“The judiciary belongs to the nation, and is not a family organization,” he told the state Islamic Republic News Agency on Tuesday, an apparent swipe at the Larijani family.

President Ahmadinejad, who is embroiled in political fights with both the parliament and the judiciary, has long criticized what he calls the Larijani family’s grip on power in Iran. The Larijanis counter that they have all been appointed to their positions through normal procedures.

The Larijani family is well known in Iran for the high positions they hold. One of the brothers, Ali Larijani, 55, is the head of parliament and former top nuclear negotiator, another, Sadegh Larijani, 52, is an ayatollah who heads Iran’s judiciary. The oldest brother, Mohammad-Javad Larijani, 61, is a Berkeley-educated mathematician, and one of the main theoreticians of the Islamic Republic’s political ideology.

Ali Larijani is expected to run in upcoming presidential elections scheduled for June 14, for which president Ahmadinejad is expected to support one of his own close aides as a candidate. The accusations against the Larijani family seem aimed at portraying them and their supporters as corrupt as elections near.

Mr. Mortazavi’s arrest, directly following Mr. Ahmadinejad’s disclosure of the film, is remarkable given that many politicians had called for Mr. Mortazavi’s arrest over the prison deaths, an incident harshly condemned by the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

“A person was attempting to do trades that seem illegal,” Mr. Mortazavi told the Iranian Student News Agency on Monday before his arrest. “I merely reported this case to the government.”

On Sunday Ali Larijani said in parliament that he had no problem with the accusations, saying it reflected more on the president’s conduct. “They only show his true character,” the semiofficial Fars News Agency quoted him as saying.

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Jillian Michaels: My Son Phoenix Is 'Fiery' Like Me

Mom & Babies
Celebrity Baby Blog

02/04/2013 at 03:00 PM ET

Gregg DeGuire/WireImage

Jillian Michaels‘ son Phoenix is already taking after his mama — just not the expected one!

Although The Biggest Loser trainer expected her baby boy to inherit her partner’s laidback approach to life — Heidi Rhoades delivered their son in May — the 8-month-old’s budding personality is the polar opposite.

“He wants to walk and he gets really pissed about it when he can’t. He gets frustrated,” Michaels, 38, told PEOPLE at the recent TCAs.

“He’s a fiery little sucker, he’s just like me. I’m like, ‘You were supposed to be like Heidi!’ But he’s not. It’s not good, not good.”

Admitting she is “terrified for when he’s a teenager,” Michaels has good reason to be: Recently she spotted her son — who is “crawling aggressively” — putting his electrician skills to the test in the family room.

“He’s into everything, which is kind of a nightmare to be totally honest,” she says. “We have an outlet in the floor in the living room and I caught him eating the outlet on the floor … I was like, ‘Mother of God!’”

Phoenix’s big sister Lukensia, 3, has also been busy keeping her mamas on their toes. “Lu just had her first ski trip and she had a little crush on her teacher, Ollie,” Michaels shares.

“At first I was like, ‘Oh my God, we’re letting our baby go!’ The second day we took her she ran right to him — loves Ollie.”

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Bullying study: It does get better for gay teens

CHICAGO (AP) — It really does get better for gay and bisexual teens when it comes to being bullied, although young gay men have it worse than their lesbian peers, according to the first long-term scientific evidence on how the problem changes over time.

The seven-year study involved more than 4,000 teens in England who were questioned yearly through 2010, until they were 19 and 20 years old. At the start, just over half of the 187 gay, lesbian and bisexual teens said they had been bullied; by 2010 that dropped to 9 percent of gay and bisexual boys and 6 percent of lesbian and bisexual girls.

The researchers said the same results likely would be found in the United States.

In both countries, a "sea change" in cultural acceptance of gays and growing intolerance for bullying occurred during the study years, which partly explains the results, said study co-author Ian Rivers, a psychologist and professor of human development at Brunel University in London.

That includes a government mandate in England that schools work to prevent bullying, and changes in the United States permitting same-sex marriage in several states.

In 2010, syndicated columnist Dan Savage launched the "It Gets Better" video project to encourage bullied gay teens. It was prompted by widely publicized suicides of young gays, and includes videos from politicians and celebrities.

"Bullying tends to decline with age regardless of sexual orientation and gender," and the study confirms that, said co-author Joseph Robinson, a researcher and assistant professor of educational psychology at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. "In absolute terms, this would suggest that yes, it gets better."

The study appears online Monday in the journal Pediatrics.

Eliza Byard, executive director of the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network, said the results mirror surveys by her anti-bullying advocacy group that show bullying is more common in U.S. middle schools than in high schools.

But the researchers said their results show the situation is more nuanced for young gay men.

In the first years of the study, gay boys and girls were almost twice as likely to be bullied as their straight peers. By the last year, bullying dropped overall and was at about the same level for lesbians and straight girls. But the difference between men got worse by ages 19 and 20, with gay young men almost four times more likely than their straight peers to be bullied.

The mixed results for young gay men may reflect the fact that masculine tendencies in girls and women are more culturally acceptable than femininity in boys and men, Robinson said.

Savage, who was not involved in the study, agreed.

"A lot of the disgust that people feel when you bring up homosexuality ... centers around gay male sexuality," Savage said. "There's more of a comfort level" around gay women, he said.

Kendall Johnson, 21, a junior theater major at the University of Illinois, said he was bullied for being gay in high school, mostly when he brought boyfriends to school dances or football games.

"One year at prom, I had a guy tell us that we were disgusting and he didn't want to see us dancing anymore," Johnson said. A football player and the president of the drama club intervened on his behalf, he recalled.

Johnson hasn't been bullied in college, but he said that's partly because he hangs out with the theater crowd and avoids the fraternity scene. Still, he agreed, that it generally gets better for gays as they mature.

"As you grow older, you become more accepting of yourself," Johnson said.

___

Online:

Pediatrics: http://www.pediatrics.org

It Gets Better: http://www.itgetsbetter.org

___

AP Medical Writer Lindsey Tanner can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/LindseyTanner

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Teacher is charged with child molestation, battery

City prosecutors Monday charged a Tarzana-area middle school teacher with more than half a dozen counts of misdemeanor child molestation in connection with the alleged sexual battery of three girls, authorities said.

Jason Leon, 32, who taught at Portola Middle School, is being held at Van Nuys Jail in lieu of $35,000 bail. He faces four counts of child molestation and three counts of battery. If convicted on all charges, Leon could face a maximum sentence of up to 51/2 years and $26,000 in fines, the Los Angeles city attorney's office said.

Leon is expected to be arraigned in Van Nuys Superior Court on Tuesday unless he posts bail, authorities said.

"Working with LAPD and the school district, this office will aggressively prosecute adults who prey upon our children," said City Atty. Carmen Trutanich. "Our schools should be one of the safest of places in the community for our children, and I will do everything within my authority to ensure their safety."

Leon was taken into custody Monday morning by LAPD officers after an eight-month investigation with L.A. Unified School Police.

The investigation began after a 13-year-old female student at Portola Middle School reported that Leon touched her inappropriately on the last day of class, June 15, 2012.

Another 13-year-old student also reported that on both June 15, 2012, and several days earlier, Leon had touched her. A third student at the school also told authorities she had been abused by Leon on several occasions in 2010, when she was 14, city prosecutors said.

Late Monday afternoon, L.A. Unified officials issued a statement saying that Leon was removed from the campus in June 2012, when the misconduct allegation first surfaced. Since then, he has been assigned to "a non-school location with no contact with students."

"At that time, parents and guardians were notified within 72 hours of his removal," school officials said. "A second notification indicating the arrest was sent" Monday.

Leon, who taught history and communications, began his L.A. Unified career in August 2006 as a probationary teacher at Portola before being permanently hired in 2007.

andrew.blankstein@latimes.com

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Scholars to Say Whether Bones Belong to Richard III

LEICESTER, England — In one of Britain’s most dramatic modern archaeological finds, researchers here announced on Monday that skeletal remains found under a parking lot in this English Midlands city were those of King Richard III, for centuries the most widely reviled of English monarchs, paving the way for a possible reassessment of his brief but violent reign.

Richard Buckley, the lead archaeologist on a project to identify the bones, told reporters that tests and research since the remains were discovered last September proved “beyond reasonable doubt” that the “individual exhumed” from a makeshift grave under the parking lot was “indeed Richard III.”

Part of the evidence came from DNA testing by the geneticist Turi King, who told the same new conference that DNA samples taken from modern-day descendants of Richard’s family matched those of the bones found at the site.

The skeleton, with an arrowhead in its back and bearing other signs of battle wounds, was exhumed in the ruins of an ancient priory. It was found in the same place as historians say Richard III was buried after perishing at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485.

At the news conference on Monday, researchers showed photographs of the skeleton as they found it, stuffed into a grave without a coffin, clearly displaying curvature of the spine as chronicled in contemporary accounts of Richard III’s appearance.

DNA samples from the remains had been compared with the DNA of two descendants of the monarch’s family. One of them, Michael Ibsen, is the son of a 16th-generation niece of King Richard’s. The second descendant wished to remain anonymous, the researchers said.

The researchers said that the body displayed 10 wounds, 8 of them in the skull and some likely to have caused death, possibly by a blow from a halberd, a kind medieval weapon with an ex-like head on a long pole. Other wounds seem to have been inflicted after his death to humiliate the monarch after his armor was stripped and he was paraded naked over the back of a horse, the researchers said.

Since at least the late 18th century, scholars have debated whether Richard was the victim of a campaign of denigration by the Tudor monarchs who succeeded him. His supporters argue that he was a decent king, harsh in the ways of his time, but a proponent of groundbreaking measures to help the poor, extend protections to suspected felons and ease bans on the printing and selling books.

But his detractors cast Richard’s 26 months on the throne as one of England’s grimmest periods, its excesses captured in his alleged role in the murder in the Tower of London of two young princes — his own nephews — to rid himself of potential rivals.

Shakespeare told the king’s story in “Richard III,” depicting him as an evil, scheming hunchback whose death at 32 ended the War of the Roses and more than three centuries of Plantagenet rule, bookended England’s Middle Ages, and proved a prelude to the triumphs of the Tudors and Elizabethans.

In Shakespeare’s account, Richard was killed after being unhorsed on the battlefield, crying: “A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse.”

The identification of the bones on Monday may lead to demands for him to buried alongside other monarchs in a place of honor, such as London’s Westminster Abbey.

The bones were first located when archaeologists used ground-penetrating radar on the site of the former priory and discovered that it was not underneath a 19th century bank where it was presumed to be, but under a parking lot across the street. The remains were located within days of the start of digging.

John F. Burns reported from Leicester, and Alan Cowell from London.

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SUPER BOWL WATCH: Brotherly advice, Twitter buzz

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Around the Super Bowl and its host city with journalists from The Associated Press bringing the flavor and details of everything surrounding the game:

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BROTHERLY ADVICE: AARON RODGERS

Baltimore Ravens coach John Harbaugh and San Francisco 49ers coach Jim Harbaugh are hardly the only high-profile siblings who’ve squared off in their arena of expertise. The AP is asking some others who can relate how to handle going against a family member in the Super Bowl.

As the middle of three brothers, Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers knows a thing or two about high-stakes competitions with siblings. It wouldn’t matter if he was facing one of his brothers in the backyard or the sport’s biggest stage.

“I’d want to beat them pretty bad,” the 2011 NFL MVP said. “I really would.”

Less than two years separates Rodgers and his older brother, Luke, now on Fuel TV’s “Clean Break,” and the two are “very competitive.”

“My older brother and I had a lot of great matchups, great one-on-one games. We competed a lot in sports,” Rodgers said.

There’s still a chance Rodgers could wind up facing one of his brothers on the field, maybe even at the Super Bowl. Jordan Rodgers led Vanderbilt to its first nine-win record since 1915 last season and is now preparing for the NFL draft.

“I hope so,” Rodgers said of the prospects of a “Rodgers Bowl.” ”And I hope we would win if that ever happened.”

— Nancy Armour — http://twitter.com/nrarmour

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TWITTER BUZZ BUILDING

Americans on Twitter are already buzzing about the Super Bowl with about 6 hours until the game kicks off.

Four terms related to the game between the Baltimore Ravens and San Francisco 49ers are trending in the United States: “Happy Super Bowl Sunday,” ”49ers,” ”Beyonce” and “Ray Lewis.”

None, however, are trending worldwide yet.

— Oskar Garcia — http://twitter.com/oskargarcia

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GUN AD

Washington lawmakers watching the Super Bowl in the beltway are getting a 30-second visit from New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s gun control group.

Mayors Against Illegal Guns, a coalition of more than 900 mayors in 48 states, paid six figures for the local spot, according to a Bloomberg spokesman.

The ad calls on lawmakers to pass rules requiring background checks on guns. It is narrated by children with “America the Beautiful” playing in the background.

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QUICKQUOTE: ANDREW LUCK

Andrew Luck has high praise for San Francisco 49ers coach Jim Harbaugh, his old coach at Stanford. Even if he did pick an unusual way to express it.

“I always enjoyed playing under coach Harbaugh. He always brought a lot of energy and enthusiasm,” the Indianapolis Colts quarterback said. “He was the type of guy you’d want in an alley fight with you. You could tell he wanted to win just as bad as the next guy.”

— Nancy Armour — http://www.twitter.com/nrarmour

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EDITOR’S NOTE — “Super Bowl Watch” shows you the Super Bowl and the events surrounding the game through the eyes of Associated Press journalists across New Orleans and around the world. Follow them on Twitter where available with the handles listed after each item.

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What Football Game? Beyoncé Rocks the Superdome in Leather & Lace

Stylewatch
Style News Now

02/03/2013 at 09:06 PM ET

One thing was certain going into Super Bowl XLVII: Beyoncé was going to put on a killer halftime show, and she was going to look amazing doing it. And if she practiced until her feet bled, there was no sign of it as she danced in her towering heels.

To strut out onstage during ‘Crazy In Love,’ the star wore an uncharacteristically demure belted lamé mini with wide lapels, but she quickly tore it away to reveal a leather bodysuit with a black lace skirt worn over her signature fishnets. She completed the look with thigh-highs and sexy black booties.

Destiny’s Child fans missing the trio’s epic matching outfits were given a treat when Kelly Rowland and Michelle Williams proved the rumors true, joining Beyoncé onstage for a medley that included ‘Bootylicious’ and ‘Single Ladies.’ Their costumes echoed Bey’s: Rowland wore a revealing V-neck Emilio Pucci bodysuit, while Williams was glam in a tough-girl ribbed leather mini.

And to ensure that Beyoncé’s hair was supremely whip-able (as demonstrated during ‘Baby Boy’ and ‘Halo’), stylist Kim Kimble gave her a “soft glam” look by curling it, then brushing out the curls and smoothing them with Kimble Hair Care Brazilian Nut and Acai serum. She sprayed it with L’Oréal’s classic Elnett hairspray to ensure it wouldn’t budge no matter what the superstar put it through.

Tell us: What did you think of Beyoncé’s Super Bowl outfit — and the Destiny’s Child reunion looks?

–Alex Apatoff

PHOTOS: VOTE ON MORE STAR STYLE HERE!

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Bullying study: It does get better for gay teens

CHICAGO (AP) — It really does get better for gay and bisexual teens when it comes to being bullied, although young gay men have it worse than their lesbian peers, according to the first long-term scientific evidence on how the problem changes over time.

The seven-year study involved more than 4,000 teens in England who were questioned yearly through 2010, until they were 19 and 20 years old. At the start, just over half of the 187 gay, lesbian and bisexual teens said they had been bullied; by 2010 that dropped to 9 percent of gay and bisexual boys and 6 percent of lesbian and bisexual girls.

The researchers said the same results likely would be found in the United States.

In both countries, a "sea change" in cultural acceptance of gays and growing intolerance for bullying occurred during the study years, which partly explains the results, said study co-author Ian Rivers, a psychologist and professor of human development at Brunel University in London.

That includes a government mandate in England that schools work to prevent bullying, and changes in the United States permitting same-sex marriage in several states.

In 2010, syndicated columnist Dan Savage launched the "It Gets Better" video project to encourage bullied gay teens. It was prompted by widely publicized suicides of young gays, and includes videos from politicians and celebrities.

"Bullying tends to decline with age regardless of sexual orientation and gender," and the study confirms that, said co-author Joseph Robinson, a researcher and assistant professor of educational psychology at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. "In absolute terms, this would suggest that yes, it gets better."

The study appears online Monday in the journal Pediatrics.

Eliza Byard, executive director of the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network, said the results mirror surveys by her anti-bullying advocacy group that show bullying is more common in U.S. middle schools than in high schools.

But the researchers said their results show the situation is more nuanced for young gay men.

In the first years of the study, gay boys and girls were almost twice as likely to be bullied as their straight peers. By the last year, bullying dropped overall and was at about the same level for lesbians and straight girls. But the difference between men got worse by ages 19 and 20, with gay young men almost four times more likely than their straight peers to be bullied.

The mixed results for young gay men may reflect the fact that masculine tendencies in girls and women are more culturally acceptable than femininity in boys and men, Robinson said.

Savage, who was not involved in the study, agreed.

"A lot of the disgust that people feel when you bring up homosexuality ... centers around gay male sexuality," Savage said. "There's more of a comfort level" around gay women, he said.

Kendall Johnson, 21, a junior theater major at the University of Illinois, said he was bullied for being gay in high school, mostly when he brought boyfriends to school dances or football games.

"One year at prom, I had a guy tell us that we were disgusting and he didn't want to see us dancing anymore," Johnson said. A football player and the president of the drama club intervened on his behalf, he recalled.

Johnson hasn't been bullied in college, but he said that's partly because he hangs out with the theater crowd and avoids the fraternity scene. Still, he agreed, that it generally gets better for gays as they mature.

"As you grow older, you become more accepting of yourself," Johnson said.

___

Online:

Pediatrics: http://www.pediatrics.org

It Gets Better: http://www.itgetsbetter.org

___

AP Medical Writer Lindsey Tanner can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/LindseyTanner

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