"At that time I was a little nervous as to why he was asking," the bartender said. "I don't know if it's because he felt out of place if he wasn't gay, or if it's because he wanted to actually find out if he's in the right place."

He said the man was dressed in a hooded, black sweat shirt, with the hood over his face, and baggy jeans. "He just had a stone cold look on his face ... just emotionless," Phillip said.

Recalling he checked the man's ID before serving him a drink, Phillip said the identification indicated he was 23, with an October 19, 1982, birth date.

After finishing the drink and ordering a second one, Philip said, the man moved to the back of the bar, watching a game of pool briefly before taking out a hatchet -- a small ax the size of a hammer, Phillip said. "He started swinging the hatchet on top of this customer's head," he said.

The bartender said he then called 911, trying to keep the phone from view, and urged patrons out the door.

Meanwhile, the attacker struck a second patron with the hatchet, pulled out a gun and shot the first victim in the face and the second twice in the head, Phillip said. A third person also was shot in the abdomen.

Phillip said he came face to face with the attacker at the bar door and the man pointed a gun at his face and pulled the trigger but nothing happened.

A helicopter transported one of the victims to a hospital in Boston, about 50 miles north of New Bedford, and the other two went to St. Luke's Hospital in New Bedford. Police said they are in serious condition.

The Massachusetts Gay and Lesbian Political Caucus issued a statement in response to the attack. "Unfortunately, the gay community is used to hate crimes," the statement said.

The psychiatric association's statement, approved by voice vote on the first day of its weeklong annual meeting in Atlanta, cites the "positive influence of a stable, adult partnership on the health of all family members."

The resolution recognizes "that gay men and lesbians are full human beings who should be afforded the same human and civil rights," said Margery Sved, a Raleigh, N.C., psychiatrist and member of the assembly's committee on gay and lesbian issues.

The document clarifies that the association is addressing same-sex civil marriage, not religious marriages. It takes no position on any religion's views on marriage.

Massachusetts is the only state that allows same-sex marriage. Eighteen states have passed constitutional amendments outlawing same-sex marriage.

"Under these rules, a heterosexual man who had unprotected sex with HIV-positive prostitutes would be OK as a donor one year later, but a gay man in a monogamous, safe-sex relationship is not OK unless he's been celibate for five years," said Leland Traiman, director of a clinic in Alameda, Calif., that seeks gay sperm donors.

Traiman said adequate safety assurances can be provided by testing a sperm donor at the time of the initial donation, then freezing the sperm for a six-month quarantine and testing the donor again to be sure there is no new sign of HIV or other infectious diseases.

Although there is disagreement over whether the FDA guideline regarding gay men will have the force of law, most doctors and clinics are expected to observe it.

The practical effect of the provision _ part of a broader set of cell and tissue donation regulations that take effect May 25 _ is hard to gauge. It is likely to affect some lesbian couples who want a child and prefer to use a gay man's sperm for artificial insemination.

But it is the provision's symbolic aspect that particularly troubles gay-rights groups. Kevin Cathcart, executive director of Lambda Legal, has called it "policy based on bigotry."

"The part I find most offensive _ and a little frightening _ is that it isn't based on good science," Cathcart said. "There's a steadily increasing trend of heterosexual transmission of HIV, and yet the FDA still has this notion that you protect people by putting gay men out of the pool."

In a letter to the FDA, Lambda Legal has suggested a screening procedure based on sexual behavior, not sexual orientation. Prospective donors _ gay or straight _ would be rejected if they had engaged in unprotected sex in the previous 12 months with an HIV-positive person, an illegal drug user, or "an individual of unknown HIV status outside of a monogamous relationship."

But an FDA spokeswoman cited FDA documents suggesting that officials felt the broader exclusion was prudent even if it affected gay men who practice safe sex.

"The FDA is very much aware that strict exclusion policies eliminate some safe donors," said one document.

Many doctors and fertility clinics already have been rejecting gay sperm donors, citing the pending FDA rules or existing regulations of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine.

"With an anonymous sperm donor, you can't be too careful," said a society spokeswoman, Eleanor Nicoll. "Our concern is for the health of the recipient, not to let more and more people be sperm donors."

However, some sperm banks, notably in California, have welcomed gay donors. The director of one of them, Alice Ruby of the Oakland-based Sperm Bank of California, said her staff had developed procedures for identifying gay men with an acceptably low risk of HIV.

Gay men are a major donor source at Traiman's Rainbow Flag sperm bank, and he said that practice would continue despite the new rules.

"We're going to continue to follow judicious, careful testing procedures for our clients that even experts within the FDA say is safe," said Traiman, referring to the six-month quarantine.

The FDA rules do not prohibit gay men from serving as "directed" sperm donors. If a woman wishing to become pregnant knows a gay man and asks that he provide sperm for artificial insemination, a clinic could provide that service even if the man had engaged in sex with other men within five years.

However, Traiman said some lesbian couples do not have a gay friend they know and trust well enough to be the biological father of their child, and would thus prefer an anonymous donor.

Dr. Deborah Cohan, an obstetrics and gynecology instructor at the University of California, San Francisco, said some lesbians prefer to receive sperm from a gay donor because they feel such a man would be more receptive to the concept of a family headed by a same-sex couple.

"This rule will make things legally more difficult for them," she said. "I can't think of a scientifically valid reason _ it has to be an issue of discrimination."

"It appears that no rational purpose exists for limiting marriage in this state to opposite-sex partners," Kramer wrote.

The judge wrote that the state's historical definition of marriage, by itself, cannot justify the denial of equal protection for gays and lesbians.

"The state's protracted denial of equal protection cannot be justified simply because such constitutional violation has become traditional," Kramer wrote.

Kramer ruled in lawsuits brought by the city of San Francisco and a dozen same-sex couples last March. The suits were brought after the California Supreme Court halted a four-week marriage spree that Mayor Gavin Newsom had initiated in February 2004 when he directed city officials to issue marriage licenses to gays and lesbians in defiance of state law.

The plaintiffs said withholding marriage licenses from gays and lesbians trespasses on the civil rights all citizens are guaranteed under the California Constitution.

Robert Tyler, an attorney with the conservative Alliance Defense Fund, said the group would appeal Kramer's ruling.

Attorney General Bill Lockyer has said in the past that he expected the matter eventually would have to be settled by the California Supreme Court.

A pair of bills pending before the California Legislature would put a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage on the November ballot. If California voters approve such an amendment, as those in 13 other states did last year, that would put the issue out of the control of lawmakers and the courts.

In a hearing in December, Senior Assistant Attorney General Louis Mauro acknowledged that California is "a leader in affording rights" to same-sex couples. But he maintained that the state has a defensible reason for upholding the existing definition of marriage as part of an important tradition.

"State law says there is a fundamental right to marry," he told Kramer. "We concede that. State law also says marriage is a contract between a man and a woman."

But a deputy city attorney, Therese Stewart, criticized "the so-called tradition argument," saying the meaning of marriage has evolved over time. As examples, she cited now-overturned bans on marriage by interracial couples, or laws that treated wives as a husband's property.

Kramer is the fourth trial court judge in recent months to decide that the right to marry and its attendant benefits must be extended to same-sex couples. Two Washington state judges, ruling last summer in separate cases, held that prohibiting same-sex marriage violates that state's constitution, and on Feb. 4, a judge in Manhattan ruled in favor of five gay couples who had been denied marriage licenses by New York City. That ruling applies only in the city but could extend statewide if upheld on appeal. Similar cases are pending in trial courts in Connecticut and Maryland.

"A short step beneath the surface reveals that one of the differences being celebrated is homosexuality," wrote Ed Vitagliano in an article for the American Family Association.

The video is a remake of the 1979 hit song "We Are Family" using the voices and images of SpongeBob, Barney, Winnie the Pooh, Bob the Builder, the Rugrats and other TV cartoon characters. It was made by a foundation set up by songwriter Nile Rodgers after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, in an effort to promote healing.

Christian groups however have taken exception to the tolerance pledge on the foundation's Web site, which asks people to respect the sexual identity of others along with their abilities, beliefs, culture and race.

"Their inclusion of the reference to 'sexual identity" within their 'tolerance pledge' is not only unnecessary, but it crosses a moral line," James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, said in a statement released Thursday.

Rodgers said he was astounded by the attack.

"That is so myopic and harsh," he told Reuters. "You have really got to look hard to find anything in this that is offensive to anyone. The last thing I am going to do is taint these characters."

Dobson was quoted by the New York Times on Thursday as having singled out the wildly popular SpongeBob during remarks about the video at dinner this week in Washington, D.C.

SpongeBob, who lives in a pineapple under the sea, was "outed" by the U.S. media in 2002 after reports that the TV show and its merchandise are popular with gays. His creator, Stephen Hillenburg, said at the time that though SpongeBob was an oddball, he thought of all the characters in the show as asexual.

It is not the first time that children's TV favorites have come under the critical spotlight of the Christian right. In 1999, the Rev. Jerry Falwell described Tinky Winky, the purse-toting purple Teletubbie, as a gay role model.

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