Fifty-six Islamic nations and the Vatican are lobbying United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan to reverse his January decision to grant spousal benefits to employees who have been united in an official same-sex union in their home nation.

A spokesman for the Organization of the Islamic Conference said there is “no justifiable basis” for giving the benefits to employees from the dozen or so nations where same-sex couples can marry or enter into a marriage-like civil union or registered partnership.

The Gay and Lesbian Center in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, closed March 11 due to money problems, the CBC reported.

A telephone support line and Web site are expected to continue operating.

Board co-chair Roz Ostendorff said governments were inconsistent in their financial support for the center which, she said, reduced volunteerism. The center had been in operation for 30 years.

Gay pop singer George Michael, 40, says he has enough money and does not want to put up with record companies any more, so he will give away his new music online in the future.

Downloaders will be welcome to make a donation, which Michael will route to charity, he told BBC Radio 1 on March 10.

“I’ll hopefully be a happier man, giving my music and also doing something really positive with my music if people are generous enough to donate to the site,” he said. “I’ll remove myself from all that negativity. I’m sure it’s unprecedented. It’s definitely unprecedented for someone who still sells records. I’ve been very well remunerated for my talents over the years, so I really don’t need the public’s money.”

Singaporean police March 12 banned three planned seminars on gay literature, Britain’s The Guardian reported.

The seminars were to accompany a gay play from Taiwan, Lovers’ Words, which itself is awaiting official approval – but from the government’s media-development authority, not the police.

Police officials deemed that the seminar is “contrary to public interest.”

The killers of nine men at a Cape Town, South Africa, gay massage parlor and escort service were sent to prison for life March 16.

Adam Woest, 27, and Trevor Theys, 44, tied up, shot and slit the throats of 10 men at the Sizzlers business on Jan. 20, 2003. One of the men survived despite taking two bullets in the head.

“Your attitude to your fellow human beings is that of utter callousness and brutalness,” Cape High Court Judge Nathan Erasmus told Woest and Theys. “The court has the responsibility to act fearlessly to show the world the repugnance of your actions.”

The two men never said why they committed the crimes. Speculation has centered on gang or drug wars, or anti-gay hatred.

South Africa, population 43 million, has a high crime rate, which includes an average of 55 murders a day.

Australian Prime Minister John Howard says his opposition to same-sex marriage is a matter not of intolerance but of common sense.

“The reason I don’t support gay marriage is that I think it in different ways reduces the status of marriage as so commonly understood in our society,” he told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation on March 18. “There has to be a point at which you stand up for certain benchmark institutions. I don’t think that is intolerant, I think it’s common sense because they contribute to the continuity and the stability of society.”

Howard also has spoken out recently against allowing gays to adopt children.

Longtime Spanish gay activist Jordi Petit, a former secretary general of the International Lesbian and Gay Association, has received the Catalonia Institute of Human Rights’ 27th annual Solidarity Prize.

The award was presented in the Catalonian Parliament in Barcelona by Parliament President Ernest Benach and Justice Councilor Josep Maria Vallès.

“I understand that this award, which I proudly receive for my work, is a recognition of the volunteers in the GLBT movement over these 26 years of democracy in Spain,” Petit said.

Famed gay Spanish movie director Pedro Almodóvar has been threatened with a “slander and libel” lawsuit by Spain’s outgoing conservative government, which was ousted in the March 14 elections.

Speaking March 17 at a movie screening, Almodóvar said: “We have to understand something terrifying. The PP [the Popular Party, the conservatives] was about to, at midnight Saturday, bring about a coup d’état. I don’t want to be polite or delicate – I’m not trying to throw stones – but you have to see how the PP has been operating.”

Almodóvar was referring to a rumor that the night before the election, the PP asked King Juan Carlos to postpone the voting in the wake of the March 11 terrorist bombings of Madrid trains, which killed 201 people and injured 1,500. The PP has called the rumor a “colossal lie.”

The bombings have been widely credited with turning the tide against the PP, which had been expected to win re-election, in favor of the Socialist Workers Party.

Outgoing PP Prime Minister José María Aznar has strongly supported the United States’ war in Iraq despite polls showing that the majority of Spaniards do not. That support has been blamed for the train bombings, which are suspected of having been carried out by the al-Qaeda-linked Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group.