High school students, neighborhood residents and anti-gay protesters from the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas, faced off this week at a gay rights rally outside Glen Burnie High School dealing with same-sex marriage.

Photojournalist Kaitlin Newman was there on assignment for Voice of Baltimore and filed this report, along with exclusive photographs.

Anti-gay protesters from Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas, were restrained out of harm's way by armored Anne Arundel County Police across the street from Glen Burnie High. There were no confrontations and the protest was peaceful. (VoB Photos/Kaitlin Newman)

One of many rainbow posters and costumes seen last week at gay rights protest on Kuethe Rd. outside Glen Burnie High School.

GLEN  BURNIE  HIGH  SCHOOL
STUDENTS AND COMMUNITY
VS.  WESTBORO BAPTISTS

I was not straight, I was not gay,
… I was Love. —Michael Hooper
 
By Kaitlin Newman
 
Kuethe Road, a normally peaceful and quiet area in Glen Burnie, was anything but quiet this past week: It was flooded with rainbow socks, bracelets and multicolored hairdos, along with placards proclaiming — and condemning — gay rights and same-sex marriage.

Signs dotted the entire street and people crammed on top of each other just to get a shout-out across the road where Glen Burnie High School sits.

The school was closed at midweek in anticipation of a protest planned by Westboro Baptist Church (WBC), the independent Topeka, Kansas, organization known for its extremist stance against homosexuality and for protest activities that include desecrating the American flag and picketing funerals of U.S. servicemen and women. Widely considered a hate group, the church consists primarily of family members of its head and founder, Fred Phelps, and claims to have about 40 adherents.

The high school students, just one part of the liberal and diverse Glen Burnie
community, met the Westboro Baptist Church members with signs proclaiming acceptance, peace and love — and pro-gay rights movement slogans.

The WBC members crowded together in front of the high school, protected by
armored police officers, behind crime-scene tape. A line of police and a road was all that separated the red-shirted WBC members from the parade of rainbow flags and neon posters.

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Recent cover of Baltimore Jewish Times. The magazine is trying to emerge from Chap. 11 bankruptcy.

CEO’S MOM  PROVIDES CHICKEN SOUP
IN THE FORM OF  $100,000 LOAN
TO CURE AILING MAGAZINE
 
By Alan Z. Forman
 
UPDATE (April 2nd):  The Baltimore Jewish Times was sold at bankruptcy auction this morning to the owner of Washington Jewish Week for $1.26 million.  (Read the Baltimore Business Journal story by clicking here.)
 
Chicken soup when a child is sick has long been the storied panacea of the stereotypical Jewish mother.

It cures all ills. Or so most Jewish mothers would attest.

On Tuesday, in U.S. Bankruptcy Court, the mother of the CEO of Charm City’s principal Jewish publication, the Baltimore Jewish Times, was authorized by Associate Judge Nancy V. Alquist to provide much-needed chicken soup to her son’s publication in the form of a $100,000 loan to keep the magazine in business.

Brushing aside objections to giving Ronnie Buerger’s cash infusion “super-priority” administrative status — which would allow her to be repaid before most other creditors in the event the publication is ultimately liquidated — Alquist initially denied a request to give first claim to a portion of the loan that will go to pay the publication’s law firm, Tydings and Rosenberg LLP.

Alter Communications Inc. publishes the Jewish Times and is the beneficiary of the loan from CEO Andrew A. Buerger’s mother. Most of the funds will be used to cover Alter employees’ back pay and other operational costs, including telephone and Internet service, along with postage for mailing the weekly publication.

Payments will also go to the magazine’s current printer and a freelance editor, as well as for salaries and commissions to salespeople and managers that are in arrears.

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LEGACY JOURNALISM
AT  A  CROSSROADS

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Artist's rendering of Constellation/Exelon Bal- timore headquarters planned for construction at bakery magnate's Harbor Point complex.

CONSTELLATION ENERGY  MERGER
INTO EXELON CORP. DUE MONDAY

Massive merged energy provider
scheduled  to  leave  downtown
for  bakery magnate Paterakis’
27-acre Harbor Point complex
 
Baltimore stands to lose up to 600 jobs, many of them high-paying, along with its last Fortune 500 company when Exelon Corp. takes over Constellation Energy Group Monday morning.

On Friday, federal regulators gave final approval to the acquisition, which sets a new standard for so-called “cross-border” utility mergers around the United States.

Constellation employs approximately 1,200 workers at its current Pratt St. headquarters downtown. Exelon said last month the newly merged firm will leave the downtown location for a massive complex at Harbor Point, which it intends to build in conjunction with bakery magnate John Paterakis Sr.’s Harbor East Development Group LLC, on the former AlliedSignal site, midway between the Inner Harbor and Fells Point.

A Fortune 500 company with recent years’ revenues of over $20 billion, Constellation owns Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. (BGE) and operates more than 35 power plants in 11 states, mainly Maryland, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York and California.

The new firm will be headquartered in Chicago and operate utilities in Baltimore, Chicago and Philadelphia. BGE will remain headquartered in Baltimore.

Between 2007 and the present, the stock price of Constellation Energy fell from $103.78 a share to a low of $15.50 in March 2009 and a 2011 high of $40.97, closing Friday for the last time before the merger at $36.15.

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Loyola University Maryland men's basketball team celebrates Monday night victory over Fairfield to win first MAAC championship since 1994.

GREYHOUNDS DEFEAT FAIRFIELD STAGS,
CLINCH  BERTH  TOWARD  ‘FINAL FOUR’

Last men’s basketball title was in 1994

Loyola University Maryland clinched its first men’s basketball title in 18 years Monday, defeating Connecticut’s Fairfield University Stags by a score of 48-44.

The victory, in Springfield Mass., was not assured until game’s end, as the second-seeded Greyhounds defeated the number-four Stags to win the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference (MAAC) championship and an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament scheduled to begin in Dayton Ohio March 13.

Both Loyola and Fairfield are Jesuit universities.

Popularly known as “March Madness” a/k/a the “Big Dance,” the annual National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Tournament was organized in 1939 and now features 68 college basketball teams. It is a single-elimination tournament.
 
— VoB Staff report
 
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