Gay pride parades continued around the world in early July. About 3,000 people marched in heavy rain through the center of Dublin, Ireland July 3. According to UTV: “Lorries [trucks] blasting out ’80s electro-pop music accompanied the motley assortment of 6-foot drag queens, sailors, devils and angels lost in a sea of pink feather boas. Marchers dressed as giant walking sperm followed youth groups, AIDS awareness groups, a gay hiking club and a deaf gay group as they danced through the capital.”

Between 700,000 and 1 million people turned out for Madrid’s 26th gay pride parade July 3, organizers said. This year’s slogan was “The time is right,” a reference to the new Socialist government’s promise to legalize full same-sex marriage.

Some 50,000 people attended London’s pride celebration July 3. The parade, from Hyde Park to Trafalgar Square, featured more than 30 floats and a dozen samba bands. A “Big Gay Out” concert followed in Finsbury Park.

“Not that long ago there were important political issues that people were angry about, like Section 28. Now we are hopefully going to see the Partnership Bill go through Parliament, so this is a celebration,” said gay actor Sir Ian McKellen. “This parade helps say to people who haven’t come out yet, ‘There’s nothing to be frightened of.’”

Section 28 was a 1988 law that banned local governments and schools from promoting homosexuality or “the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship.” It was repealed in November 2003.

Tens of thousands of GLBTs also marched in Cologne, Germany July 3.

Support for same-sex marriage has increased in Canada after three provinces legalized full same-sex marriage over the past 14 months.

An Environics Research Group poll released July 6 found that 57 percent of Canadians favor legalization of full marriage for same-sex couples and only 38 percent oppose it. That’s a 9 percent increase in support since last September.

Court rulings have opened up marriage in Canada’s three most populous provinces: British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec.

The pollsters surveyed 1,500 adults between June 16 and 21. The margin of error is 2.5 percent.

Canada’s federal government is planning to legalize same-sex marriage nationwide in coming months.

The government of Canada’s Yukon Territory June 29 refused to issue a marriage license to a same-sex couple but suggested they go ahead with their wedding nonetheless.

The government promised to issue the license later, retroactively, if the territorial court system or the federal Parliament legalizes same-sex marriage in the Yukon.

“That’s unacceptable,” groom-to-be Stephen Dunbar told CBC North news. “Our marriage is July 17. I don’t think any of the Supreme Court or their lawyers had to wait for their marriage licenses. There’s no reason why we should have to wait.”

The Yukon Supreme Court, which is a lower trial court, will hear the case of Dunbar and partner Rob Edge on July 14.

The highest courts in British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec have legalized full same-sex marriage over the past 14 months, and the federal government has promised to do so nationwide this year.

A Pentecostal Movement preacher in Borgholm, Sweden, was jailed for one month June 29 for making anti-gay statements.

Åke Green was found guilty of agitating against an ethnic minority for saying homosexuality results from “evil powers” and violates the Bible’s story of creation, that gays are a tumor on society and that AIDS is caused by gay sex.

The Kalmar district court ruled that the right of gays to be protected from such language outweighed Green’s right to make homophobic statements in the name of religion, the Aftonbladet daily newspaper said.

Sweden’s National Federation for Sexual Equality (RFSL) commented: “Freedom of religion should never imply agitation against persons. It is this type of agitation that foments hate crimes against homosexual, bisexual and transgender persons.”

Fifteen transgender students at the Chiang Mai Technology School in Thailand have been given their own toilet because they didn’t feel welcome in the men’s or women’s restrooms.

The “Pink Lotus Bathroom” has intertwined male and female symbols on the door, four stalls and no urinals.

“They don’t get teased in the bathroom anymore,” the school’s registrar, Posaporn Promprakai, told the Associated Press. “They’re much happier.”

Dozens of gays, lesbians and “gender activists” protested in New Delhi, India June 30 against the nation’s ban on gay sex, the Hindustan Times and New Kerala newspapers reported. They marched around the Jantar Mantar observatory waving banners and shouting slogans.

Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code reads, “Whoever voluntarily has carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man, woman or animal, shall be punished with imprisonment for life, or with imprisonment ... for a term which may extend to ten years, and shall also be liable to fine.”

“At a time when even a country like China has removed the criminal tag from homosexuality, India continues to adhere to the Victorian prohibitions,” Jaya Sharma of Voices Against 377 told the Times.