Metropolitan Community Churches founder Troy Perry was banned from giving a speech at a meeting of gay rights and Pride groups in Singapore last month.

“I’ve had enough experiences for three lifetimes, but this was the first time an entire country banned me from public speaking,” Perry said.

Perry was allowed into Singapore, but instructed by the authorities to speak with people only one-on-one.

So, he went to the meeting as scheduled, but, instead of giving his speech, he answered questions for three hours, from one person at a time.

“Of course, I was answering them out loud in front of the audience, so I was actually able to share far more information than if I had only delivered my speech,” Perry noted.

Singapore has been on a gay-ban spree of late.

On July 30, the Media Development Authority (MDA) prohibited an exhibition of 80 of photographer Alex Au’s pictures of gay people kissing. The censors said the exhibit would “promote a homosexual lifestyle and cannot be allowed.”

Gay sex is illegal in Singapore and punishable with two years in prison.

The exhibition, which was part of two weeks of Pride activities, was replaced with a PowerPoint presentation during which some of the photos were projected and discussed. Organizers also set up a photo corner where attendees could have their own kissing photos taken, and Au showed some attendees his private album of the 80 pictures.

On Aug. 3, the authorities banned a Pride forum at which retired Canadian law professor Douglas Sanders was to discuss “Sexual Orientation in International Law: The Case of Asia.” Police withdrew the license for the event, the immigration department canceled Sanders’ visa, and the Home Affairs Ministry stated that “foreigners should refrain from interfering [in] discourse over a domestic issue such as the laws that govern homosexuality in Singapore.”

The Roman Catholic vicar general of Havana, Monsignor Carlos Manuel de Céspedes García-Menocal, supports “stable same-sex relationships” being “protected by civil laws.”

He staked out his position in an article published in the July/August issue of the Archdiocese of Havana’s New Word magazine.

Céspedes said, “Contemporary Western society is no longer the same as that which arrived at present clarifications concerning marriage.”

Although the church “is not going to renounce criteria established by revelation and set by tradition,” he said, “neither can it ignore contemporary personal and family reality.”

“Today we know that human reality is much more complex than we believed and that the situation of Christianity in the world is not excessively appealing, not even in the so-called ‘Christian West,’” the vicar general said.

The Southern Common Market’s human-rights committee issued a declaration in August urging an end to discrimination against sexual and gender minorities in member nations.

The International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission called the move “the first significant step in promoting region-wide sexual and gender rights in Latin America [that could] result in sweeping changes to the rights and policies affecting lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.”

The measure now moves to the full Common Market for consideration. IGLHRC believes it will pass.

The declaration calls for repeal of all anti-gay laws, gay-issues education in schools, involvement of GLBT people in public education, GLBT public-awareness campaigns, an end to police harassment and persecution, passage of laws to protect GLBT couples and families, allowing transgender people to officially change their name and sex designation, creation of government agencies to serve and protect gay people, adding “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” to the draft Inter-American Convention Against Racism and All Forms of Discrimination, and creation of a regional authority to monitor nations’ compliance with the declaration’s goals.

“If this declaration is ultimately adopted as a resolution by the MERCOSUR [Mercado Común del Sur, or Southern Common Market], it will mark the single biggest global development for the LGBT community since the range of inter-European entities set out to abolish discrimination and the criminalization of homophobia in Europe,” said IGLHRC Executive Director Paula Ettelbrick.

MERCOSUR, created in 1985, is a regional trade and integration agreement among member states Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay, and associate member states Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela.

Openly gay Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoë will seek a second seven-year term in March’s municipal election.

He promises to continue his efforts to add green spaces, modernize the city and make it more affordable.

“My program is aimed at placing Paris ahead of the curve,” Delanoë told Le Parisien, a daily newspaper.

Meanwhile, there is speculation that Delanoë could be the Socialists’ candidate for the French presidency in the 2012 election.

An Islamic court in Malaysia’s Malacca state voided a couple’s marriage Sept. 4 after determining that the husband was female, local newspapers reported.

Mohd. Sufian Mohamad, 40, and Zaiton Aziz, 43, were ordered to separate after a medical exam found that Sufian was a woman.

The couple had been married nearly five years but ran into trouble in registering their marriage with the state’s religious affairs department, which questioned Sufian’s gender.

Zaiton told the court “she had never seen or touched her husband’s private parts and had taken him to be a man all along and that she felt ... satisfied,” Judge Che Saufi Che Husin said in his ruling.

The couple has 14 days to appeal the decision.

Malaysia does not permit sex-change operations. Assistance: Bill Kelley