An Ohio politician is urging police to treat the murder of a transgender woman as a hate crime.

Cernia Acoff, a 20-year-old known as Cici, was found half-naked stabbed, dumped in a pond tied to a concrete block and a steel pipe.

She was found 17 April, three weeks after she went missing on 27 March.

Still grieving the loss of her mother, Carla Hale was fired from her job as a high school physical education teacher - after 19 years - because the name of her lesbian partner had appeared in her mother's obituary.

But she is fighting her dismissal from Bishop Watterson High School in Columbus, Ohio, and has tremendous public support from students, former students, parents and even the mayor of Columbus.

Senator Rob Portman's approval numbers have declined since declaring his backing of same sex marriage.

Fired lesbian high school physical education teacher Carla Hale has gotten some high-profile support in her quest to get her job back.

Michael Coleman, the mayor of Columbus, Ohio, has tweeted his support of Hale who was fired from Bishop Watterson High School by the Columbus Diocese over her sexuality.

'I stand with Carla Hale,' Coleman wrote. 'No one in Columbus or in the United States should be denied employment because of their choice of who to love.'

Thousands are calling for a fired lesbian coach to be reinstated after her Catholic school discovered her sexuality through her mother's obituary.

An online petition, supported by teachers and alumni has received more than 10,000 signatures.

Carla Hale was fired from Bishop Watterson high school by the Columbus Diocese in Ohio over her sexuality.

As a longtime LGBT ally, Kathy Griffin was no doubt happy to see Ohio Senator Rob Portman cross Republican party lines last month and come out in support of gay marriage.

But that doesn't mean the funny redhead isn't going to give Portman a hard time in her act for doing so only after his own son came out as gay.

After 19 years, Carla Hale was fired from her job as a physical education Bishop Watterson High School in Columbus, Ohio.

The firing from the Catholic high school came shortly after a parent complained about the name of Hale's female partner appearing in a newspaper obituary on 28 March for Hale's mother who recently died.

US Senator Mark Kirk of Illinois announced today that he is in favor of gay marriage. He becomes the second Republican in the Senate to do so in recent weeks.

Kirk's announcement makes him and Ohio Senator Rob Portman the first two Republicans in the senate to support marriage equality.

The son of Rob Portman is defending his father against critics who wonder why the Ohio Republican Senator waited two years after learning his son was gay to publicly support gay marriage.

'Part of the reason for that is that it took time for him to think through the issue more deeply after the impetus of my coming out. But another factor was my reluctance to make my personal life public,' Will Portman writes in a guest column for the Yale Daily News.

I relate to the Portman family on many levels. Like Will Portman, I am also the son of a staunch Republican dad to whom I came out. My dad is older than Rob Portman. He adheres very much to the viewpoints of Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh and Fox News. Rob Portman presumably knows all those people personally.

Like the Portmans, we too had our political theory versus family integrity moment. In 2000, another Republican father of a gay son, Pete Knight, placed an anti-same sex marriage initiative on the California ballot called Proposition 22.

Conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly is blasting Ohio Republican Senator Rob Portman for coming out in support of gay marriage last week - two years after learning his son is gay.

Schlafly, 88 and the mother of a gay son herself, said in an interview this week that she believes Portman will suffer in his next election.