The leader of Germany’s Free Democrats political party came out July 24 in an interview with Der Spiegel magazine.

Guido Westerwelle also told the magazine that same-sex couples should have full adoption rights and the same tax breaks as married couples.

The government is planning to extend additional marriage rights this year to same-sex couples who register under the nation’s three-year-old partnership law. At present, the statute withholds rights in areas such as adoption, pensions, inheritance, taxation, financial support, court testimony and social-welfare benefits.

“I cannot change whether my life pleases the people or not – whether my life [as a gay man] brings [vote] increases in large cities or whether it possibly causes rejection in rural regions,” Westerwelle told Der Spiegel.

On July 28, the government reported that 6,000 same-sex couples have made use of the partnership law since it was enacted in 2001.

France’s first same-sex marriage, conducted allegedly in violation of the law June 5 by Bègles Mayor Noël Mamère, was annulled July 27 by a court in Bordeaux, of which Bègles is a suburb.

Mamère and the gay couple, Stéphane Chapin and Bertrand Charpentier, have argued that the French civil code does not prohibit same-sex marriage.

The spurned grooms plan an appeal to the European Court of Human Rights.

The French gay-rights consortium Inter Centres LGBT denounced the ruling and urged President Jacques Chirac to call a national referendum on same-sex marriage.

“The Inter Centres LGBT regrets that the judges of Bordeaux refused to follow the example of the supreme court of Massachusetts, which did not hesitate, November 18, 2003, to read the law in the light of constitutional principles,” the group said.

“It seemed possible [to us] to interpret the blur of the French civil code (which does not define in any moment marriage as the union of a man and a woman) in the light of the 1st article of the French Declaration of Human and Civic Rights [which states:] ‘Human beings are born and remain free and equal in rights.’”

Polling has shown that two-thirds of French people support granting same-sex couples access to marriage. France currently lets same-sex couples form legal civil unions, but such partnerships are denied some of the rights and obligations of marriage.

Full same-sex marriage is allowed in Belgium; the Netherlands; the Canadian provinces of British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec; Canada’s Yukon Territory; and the U.S. state of Massachusetts. Marriage-like partnership laws are on the books in Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greenland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul, and the U.S. states of California, Hawaii, New Jersey and Vermont, as well as the Australian state of Tasmania.

Two gay men kissed in front of Australian Governor General Michael Jeffrey July 24 as he addressed a Family Expo conference in Brisbane.

The governor general is the British sovereign’s Australian representative. His duties are mostly ceremonial.

Kissers Jeff Poole and Jeff Cheverton, members of the gay group Action Reform Change Queensland, said they were demonstrating that, “the family is not owned by religious fundamentalists.”

Reports said the audience gasped when the men locked lips.

A majority of members of Norway’s Parliament now favor allowing gay couples to adopt children.

The adoption ban is the last distinction between marriage and gay registered partnership in Norway.

The law could be changed within a few months.

Gays and lesbians staged their fourth pride parade July 25 in the town of Sydney on Cape Breton Island in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia. For the first time, the rainbow flag was raised above City Hall. But someone promptly stole it.

CTV said “almost 100” people gathered on sidewalks to watch the parade.

Reported hate crimes against GLBT Swedes have doubled since 1996, a new study has found.

In 1996, 25 percent of 2,000 GLBTs surveyed said they had been victims of an anti-gay hate crimes. The new study, also of 2,000 people, found that 52 percent of respondents have experienced a hate crime.

The research was conducted by criminologist Eva Tiby at the University of Stockholm.

The most commonly reported incidents involved slander, insult and verbal harassment. Twelve percent of respondents reported violent crimes and 11 percent reported sex crimes.

Same-sex relationships are not common-law marriages, South Korea’s Incheon District Court ruled July 27.

“Kim” had asked the court to force her ex-lover of 20 years, “Yu”, to pay alimony and divide up their property.

But the court said: “In our society, marriage means a mental and physical unity between a man and a woman. … A partnership between two persons of the same sex cannot be approved as a married couple. Thus, it cannot be protected legally.”