Gay-rights groups protested Dec. 23 outside the headquarters of Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party, demanding that a lawmaker be punished for antigay remarks and that the government present a timetable for enacting gay protections, the China Post reported.

Lawmaker Ho Shui-sheng had called for a ban on gay marriage, saying same-sex unions would destroy the nation because gay couples cannot reproduce. He later apologized, saying he was speaking from a “medical” point of view and is not prejudiced against gays.

More than 30 groups reportedly took part in the demonstration, including the Taiwan Tongzhi (gay) Hotline Association and the Gender-Sexuality Rights Association Taiwan.

In November, Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian said the government is planning to legalize same-sex marriage.

“The human rights of homosexuals have been gradually recognized by countries around the world,” he said. “To protect their rights, [gay] people should have the right to wed and have a family based on their free will.”

The protesters said the government needs to turn its words into action. Three countries let gays marry under ordinary marriage laws: Belgium, Canada (in Ontario and British Columbia only) and the Netherlands.

Numerous other nations grant same-sex couples most or all marriage rights under civil-union or registered-partnership laws.

The Canadian edition of Time magazine chose gay couple Michael Leshner and Michael Stark “Canadian Newsmakers of the Year.” They were the first same-sex couple to receive a Canadian marriage license.

Mid-year court rulings in Ontario and British Columbia legalized full same-sex marriage in those provinces, effective immediately. The federal government accepted the rulings and is expected to enact legislation opening up marriage nationwide.

Time Canada Bureau Chief Steven Frank said “the Michaels’” wedding started a cultural revolution and symbolizes the unprecedented acceleration of social liberalism in Canada. Only two other nations, the Netherlands and Belgium, offer gay couples access to full marriage (as opposed to civil unions or domestic partnerships).

“From gay marriage to moves to decriminalize marijuana and provide supervised injection booths for drug addicts in Vancouver, 2003 will go down in history as the year that Canada rethought what was taboo,” Frank said.

“The explanation for that broad social shift lies in deep, structural changes to Canadian society, which has steadily become both more urban and more multicultural. But it would not have happened so fast had individual men and women not pushed for change. And so, for passionately and shamelessly jumping into the front lines — and headlines — of a bitter issue, for delivering a bracing national wake-up call with eloquent and at times outrageous sound bites and public appearances, the Michaels are Time’s Canadian Newsmakers of the Year.”

Some 2,000 gay couples — 600 of them American — have gotten married in Ontario and British Columbia this year. Foreign same-sex couples can travel to the provinces, buy a license and get married the same day.

Belgium, one of the three nations in the world where same-sex couples have access to full marriage, is planning to erase the final distinction between same- and opposite-sex matrimony: access to adoption.

Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt’s Dutch-speaking Liberal Party will introduce the measure in Parliament, where it is expected to pass with help from the Socialists and the Greens, Reuters reported. Three other parties oppose the change: the French-speaking Liberals, the right-wing Vlaams Blok and the French-speaking Christian Democrats.

In a statement, the Dutch-speaking Liberals said, “Research and the practical experience of countries which already allow adoption by same-sex and bisexual couples, show that children raised by same-sex parents are not affected in a negative way.”

Same-sex couples also have access to full marriage in the Netherlands and in the Canadian provinces of Ontario and British Columbia, where courts opened up the institution in 2003. Canada’s Parliament is expected to legalize same-sex marriage nationwide sometime this year, barring any unanticipated changes in the political or judicial landscape.

Pope John Paul II attacked gays again Dec. 28.

Speaking during his traditional Sunday greeting, the pontiff said: “In our times, a misunderstood sense of rights has sometimes disturbed the nature of the family institution and conjugal bond itself. It is necessary that at every level, the efforts of those who believe in the importance of the family based on matrimony unite.”

The Vatican declared war on same-sex marriage and civil-union and domestic-partnership laws this past July 30.

The church’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith asserted: “There are absolutely no grounds for considering homosexual unions to be in any way similar or even remotely analogous to God’s plan for marriage and family. Marriage is holy, while homosexual acts go against the natural moral law. Homosexual acts close the sexual act to the gift of life.... Under no circumstances can they be approved.

“Those who would move from tolerance to the legitimization of specific rights for cohabiting homosexual persons need to be reminded that the approval or legalization of evil is something far different from the toleration of evil,” the church warned. “When legislation in favor of the recognition of homosexual unions is proposed for the first time in a legislative assembly, the Catholic law-maker has a moral duty to express his opposition clearly and publicly and to vote against it. To vote in favor of a law so harmful to the common good is gravely immoral.”

Letting gay couples adopt children, the declaration added, amounts to child abuse.

“Allowing children to be adopted by persons living in [same-sex] unions would actually mean doing violence to these children, in the sense that their condition of dependency would be used to place them in an environment that is not conducive to their full human development,” it said. “This is gravely immoral.”