The United Kingdom is moving ahead with plans for a “civil partnership” law under which same-sex couples could register their relationship with the government and acquire spousal rights and obligations.

The legislation was formally announced during the Nov. 26 Queen’s Speech.

Spousal rights and obligations would be extended in the areas of hospital visitation, parental responsibility, immigration, pension benefits, inheritance, tenancy, accident compensation, criminal-injury compensation, financial support and exemption from testifying against each other in court.

The head of the UK’s national gay lobby group, Stonewall, praised the proposal but expressed concern it may be thwarted by the House of Lords.

“This is a hugely significant milestone,” said Ben Summerskill. “Hundreds of thousands of gay couples have undergone real suffering because the law does not recognize their long-term relationships.

“We hope the government will move swiftly so that this injustice can be righted as soon as possible,” Summerskill said. “Our key anxiety arises from the House of Lords’ repeated willingness in the past to frustrate fair treatment for gay people. We hope that peers will back a move long overdue in a 21st-century nation.”

Some 400 delegates from 30 nations came together in Manila, Philippines, Nov. 11-18 for the 22nd world conference of the International Lesbian and Gay Association.

“It is extremely important that this meeting took place in Asia for the first time,” said German human-rights commissioner and conference keynote speaker Claudia Roth, in an interview with Agence France-Presse.

“This shows that human rights is indivisible and must be guaranteed, irrespective of cultures and regions.”

ILGA is a federation of 370 gay organizations from 90 nations. It stages conferences, publishes bulletins, issues action alerts, and networks Western GLBT activists with the growing gay movements in developing and formerly communist nations. ILGA initiatives have increased gay clout within the European Union, the Council of Europe, the World Health Organization, Amnesty International and other international bodies.

Australia’s Northern Territory, where Darwin is located, lowered the age of consent for male-male sex from 18 to 16 on Nov. 25.

Parliamentary debate on the issue lasted until 3:00 a.m.

The NT was the last Australian state or territory with unequal ages of consent for straight and gay sex, although in Queensland, where Brisbane is located, gays and straights cannot engage in anal sex until age 18 while other sexual acts are legal at 16.

A Brazilian court granted permanent residency to a British man Nov. 25 so he could remain with his same-sex partner.

David Ian Harrad faced deportation to England when his latest tourist visa expired. He and partner Antonio Martins dos Reis asked a court in Curitiba, 240 miles (400 km) south of São Paulo, to block the deportation, arguing they are in a common-law marriage.

Federal Judge Ana Carolina Morozowski agreed, writing, “Although they are of the same sex, the authors of the petition live in a state of matrimony, a fact which extends to Mr. Harrad the right of permanent residence.”

Morozowski based her ruling on the Brazilian Constitution, which, she said, prohibits “any form of discrimination, including discrimination as to sexual preference.”

Gays are not banned from the Russian military, officials said Nov. 27, according to an Interfax wire service report.

“There is no such medical diagnosis as homosexuality.... A classification of diseases adopted by the World Health Organization does not indicate such a disease,” the chairman of the Defense Ministry’s central medical board, Maj. Gen. Valery Kulikov, told a press conference in Moscow.

“The new regulations on military medical examinations are based on international standards, and therefore homosexuals are treated on general grounds in terms of their fitness for military service,” he said. “If they are physically and mentally healthy, they will be recognized as fit and will serve.”

Kulikov suggested, however, that gays in the military not “advertise their sexual orientation.”

“They are not liked there and will just get beaten up,” he warned.

A member of Canada’s Parliament for the conservative Canadian Alliance party was fired as the party’s family issues critic Nov. 27 after saying odd things about gays.

The party leadership said MP Larry Spencer’s comments did not reflect party beliefs.

In an interview, Spencer had told the Vancouver Sun: “I do believe it was a mistake to have legalized it [gay sex]. If somebody brought a bill in the House to do that [re-ban gay sex], I’d certainly vote for it.”

Spencer, who represents a district in the province of Saskatchewan, also said that even people who have been gay for a long time, such as Canadian MP Svend Robinson, can turn straight.

“I believe he could,” Spencer said. “I believe he would struggle with it.... The mind or the conscience that we have can be sharpened against right or wrong. It can be desensitized to think that whatever wrong that’s around us is nothing but natural and we begin to accept that.

“I just wish that there was some way that society could stand up and say, ‘This is not right.’ [If] anybody that used Colgate toothpaste, their life expectancy was lowered by 10, 15 years, what do you think would happen to Colgate toothpaste? It would be outlawed. Well, we know that’s what happens to men living a gay lifestyle.”

Spencer claimed there is a gay conspiracy to seduce children into the so-called homosexual lifestyle: “At some of those [gay] conventions in those days [the 1960s] it was discussed what some of those approaches would be, and ... for this group of people to express themselves sexually, they’re going to have to do the recruiting and ... it’s going to come by seduction.”