The United Nations Jan. 29 extended benefits to employees’ same-sex spouses and registered domestic partners. The change came in the form of an administrative order from Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

When an employee applies for the benefits, the UN will seek an OK from the national government of the worker’s home nation “to confirm the existence and validity of the domestic partnership contracted by the staff member under the law of that country.”

Same-sex marriage is permitted in the Netherlands, Belgium and the Canadian provinces of British Columbia and Ontario. Domestic partnerships or civil unions are available in Denmark/Greenland, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Norway, Portugal, Sweden and the U.S. states of California, Hawaii, New Jersey and Vermont. Gay couples also have access to some spousal rights in Australia, Austria, Hungary, New Zealand, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.

It is unclear what the U.S. government’s response would be to an inquiry regarding a UN employee from a state that offers civil unions or domestic partnerships. Marriage and marriage-like unions are regulated individually by the 50 states.

It is also unknown what determination would be made when citizens of a country that does not offer same-sex unions get married in Canada. Foreigners can arrive in British Columbia or Ontario, buy a license and get married the same day.

Two Australian men from Melbourne, married in the Canadian province of Ontario, where same-sex marriage is legal and open to foreigners, plan to demand that Australia recognize their marriage, The Age reported Feb. 4.

Jason McCheyne, 33, and Adrian Tuazon, 30, will take their fight to the Family Court. “We see marriage as a lifetime commitment, just like everyone else,” McCheyne told the newspaper. “We are a family now. We are very traditional in that sense.”

Although hundreds of American same-sex couples also have gotten married in Ontario — and in British Columbia where same-sex marriage also was legalized by court order last year — no similar court challenges have been launched in the U.S.

A member of Canada’s parliament who made disparaging remarks about gays has been dumped by his political party.

In November, Canadian Alliance MP Larry Spencer told the Vancouver Sun: “I do believe it was a mistake to have legalized it [gay sex]. 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 also claimed that gays stage “conventions” to plot the seduction of children.

“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,” he said.

As a result of these remarks, the Conservative Party of Canada — which was created in December by the merger of the Canadian Alliance and Progressive Conservative parties — voted Feb. 4 that Spencer is no longer welcome in its ranks.

Should Spencer seek re-election in his Regina, Saskatchewan district, he will have to run as an independent.

The South Korean government said Feb. 4 it will remove homosexuality from its list of unacceptable sexual acts that harm teenagers.

The list — which also includes incest, bestiality, prostitution and sadism - is used for censoring movies, books and Web sites, among other purposes.

The law change is expected to take effect in a few months’ time, following public hearings and passage by the National Assembly.

“We revised the bill because the United Nations and National Human Rights Commission of Korea, among others, said that we shouldn’t violate the human rights of homosexual minors in society,” Lee Ju-hyun, director of the government’s Commission on Youth Protection, told the JoongAng Daily newspaper.

The British Columbia College of Teachers, the Canadian province’s teacher certification and regulation body, did not violate the rights of a high-school teacher it suspended for writing anti-gay letters to a local newspaper, the provincial Supreme Court ruled Feb. 5.

Chris Kempling, who teaches in the south-central town of Quesnel, faces a month of decertification that will be postponed again while he appeals to the province’s highest court, the Court of Appeal. If he loses there, Kempling promises to push on to the Supreme Court of Canada.

Kempling says his rights to freedom of expression and religion, as guaranteed by Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms, have been violated. The College of Teachers says his “discriminatory” and “derogatory” statements constituted unbecoming conduct that conflicted with the provincial education system’s commitment to equality, dignity and respect for gay and lesbian people.

In ruling against Kempling, Supreme Court Justice Ronald Holmes stated: “Discriminatory speech is incompatible with the search for truth.... By publicly linking his private, discriminatory views of homosexuality with his status and professional judgment as a teacher and secondary school counselor, the appellant called into question his own preparedness to be impartial in the fulfillment of his professional and legal obligations to all students, as well as the impartiality of the school system. That in itself is a harmful impact on the school system as a non-discriminatory entity.”