BORSELLINO (Excerpt)

CASH ADVANCE: Judy Shepard will be in town later this month to announce full-ride scholarships to three openly gay Iowa high school students. She's the mother of Matthew Shepard, the Wyoming student murdered in the fall of `98. Shepard will be joined by the governor, maybe the lieutenant governor, and the heads of the U of I, ISU and possibly UNI.. The scholarships are being offered through the First Friday Breakfast Club, a gay men's group. The March 30 announcement is scheduled to take place in the Capitol.

Also on the gay front, former Polk County Attorney Dan Johnson is ready to step in and offer legal help if Tom Vilsack wants to battle the Legislature over gay rights. The governor's executive order protecting gays in state jobs is in the process of being overturned in the Legislature. Johnson, a former state rep now living in New York, said he'd be happy to come back to Iowa and make it a federal case. He said, "This could be fun."

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