The new prime minister of Iceland is openly lesbian.

Minister for Social Affairs Jóhanna Sigur?ardóttir, 66, was appointed to the job Feb. 1 by the new governing coalition when the previous government fell apart after the nation’s banks collapsed because of the global economic meltdown.

She is the world’s first openly gay or lesbian head of a national government, though openly gay Per-Kristian Foss served briefly as acting prime minister of Norway in 2002 when more senior ministers were out of the country.

In the 1960s, Sigur?ardóttir was a stewardess for what is now Icelandair. She has been in a registered partnership with writer Jónína Leósdóttir since 2002.

Iceland has a population of 304,367.

The Turkish GLBT group Lambda Istanbul won an appeal of a court order that shut it down, Amnesty International USA reported Jan. 21.

The Supreme Court of Appeal overruled the decision of a local court, which had agreed with the Istanbul governor’s office that Lambda’s objectives violated Turkish moral and family values.

The case now returns to the local court for issuance of a ruling consistent with the Supreme Court decision.

Lambda welcomed the decision but said it was troubled by one sentence in the ruling, which says, “(T)he dissolution of the defendant association could still be demanded if it should act counter to its constitution, in the ways of encouraging or provoking gay, lesbian, bisexual, transsexual and transvestite behavior or acting with the aim of spreading such sexual orientations.”

The group said it will feel safe only when the Turkish constitution is amended to ban discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, a long-standing goal of activists.

An Italian man was jailed in Marrakesh, Morocco, in mid-January on charges of homosexuality and taking and possessing pornographic images, the Assahra Al Maghribiya newspaper reported.

The man, identified only as “Gian Paolo,” will be deported when he has served his sentence, the report said.

The newspaper said he confessed that he headed a network of Moroccan and foreign homosexuals and shared photos of “abnormal sexual situations” on the Internet, according to a translation provided by the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission.

Two Asian men were jailed for six months at hard labor in Bahrain in mid-January on charges they engaged in sex for pay with male customers of their barbershop, the Alwaqt newspaper reported.

The men will be deported after serving their sentences for debauchery and prostitution.

Agents of the Public Morality Police reportedly arrested the men after posing as customers seeking sexual liaisons.

The Alwaqt report was translated by the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission.

Meanwhile, Bahrain’s government reportedly blocked access to several gay-cruising Web sites, including Gaydar, in late January.

Sixty-eight percent of pastors in the Church of Sweden are willing to marry same-sex couples, according to a Swedish Television poll of 1,700 ministers.

Sweden is expected to become the ninth country to legalize same-sex marriage in May.

It is possible the church will OK the performance of same-sex weddings when church officials meet this fall.

Same-sex marriage also is legal in Belgium, Canada, Nepal, the Netherlands, Norway, South Africa, Spain and the U.S. states of Connecticut and Massachusetts.

A bill before Nigeria’s National Assembly would expand Nigeria’s draconian punishments for homosexual conduct and threaten all Nigerians’ rights to privacy and free expression and association, Human Rights Watch said Jan. 26.

In a letter to President Umaru Yar’Adua, legislators, the National Human Rights Commission and other bodies, the group urged senators, representatives and the president to reject the measure, which would punish people of the same sex who live together “as husband and wife or for other purposes of same sexual relationship” with up to three years in prison, and punish anyone who “witnesses, abet[s] and aids” such a relationship with five years in prison.

The House of Representatives already approved the measure unanimously on the second of three “readings.”

“This bill masquerades as a law on marriage, but in fact it violates the privacy of anyone even suspected of an intimate relationship with a person of the same sex,” said Georgette Gagnon, HRW’s Africa director.

“This legislation would allow the state to invade people’s homes and bedrooms and investigate their private lives, and it would criminalize the work of human rights defenders. It is not a ban on marriage, but an assault on basic rights.”

Nigeria already bans gay sex (“carnal knowledge ... against the order of nature”) with up to 14 years in prison.

“The evident intent of the new bill is to extend the already-existing penalties for homosexual conduct,” HRW said. “They would no longer be limited to sexual acts between people of the same sex, but would potentially include mere cohabitation or any suspected ‘intimate relationship’ between members of the same sex.”

The group said the proposed punishment for people who “abet” a same-sex relationship could be used against anyone “who gives any help or advice to a suspected ‘same gender’ couple – anyone who rents them an apartment, tells them their rights or approves of their relationships.”

Assistance: Bill Kelley