Sixty-four percent of people in Chile believe same-sex couples should have access to legal civil unions, a Fundación Chile 21 poll has found.

But 65 percent oppose giving same-sex couples the right to full marriage when the question is asked in the context of including adoption rights.

Pollsters asked: “In [several European] countries, the possibility of wedlock for same-sex partners is being discussed. Such unions may entail the possibility of same-sex couples adopting children. Would you agree or disagree with a similar proposal for Chile?”

The survey questioned 603 adults in 10 cities during July. The margin of error is 3.5 percent.

The government of Hong Kong will survey the population to gauge its support for a host of gay rights measures, the South China Morning Post reported July 27.

On the agenda are an anti-discrimination law, recognition of same-sex relationships, and matters related to taxation, education and health, the paper said.

“I don’t think the Hong Kong SAR [special administrative region of China] government will try to impose something like this on the community without at least 50 percent support,” said Stephen Fisher, deputy secretary of the Home Affairs Bureau.

Gay activists said they are confident that at least half of the population supports GLBT equality.

In an editorial, the Morning Post endorsed the proposed changes.

“The absence of laws protecting the gay community from discrimination sits uneasily with Hong Kong’s claim to be a world city,” it said. “It undermines our community’s claim to be fair-minded, tolerant and diverse.”

The British Broadcasting Corporation upheld a complaint July 28 against one of its rugby commentators who called an altercation between two players a “gay slap.”

Ten viewers complained about announcer Brian Moore’s remark made during February’s Scotland vs. England match.

The BBC said the phrase violates guidelines concerned with “hurtful or inaccurate stereotypes.”

A record 5,000 people participated in the EuroGames, a GLBT sporting event, held July 29-Aug. 1 in Munich, Germany.

There were more than 200 competitive events in 26 sports, including, for the first time, “wheelchair dancing.” More traditional competitions included swimming, wresting, soccer, fencing and rowing.

The venue for the games was the 1972 Summer Olympics site.

Athletes came from 17 countries, mostly in Western Europe, but also from Bulgaria, Hungary and Turkey.

Some 20,000 spectators attended the games, which are staged by the European Gay and Lesbian Sport Federation. Germany’s minister of justice, Brigitte Zypries, spoke at the opening ceremonies.

In a first, a Japanese postoperative transsexual was allowed to change her gender in the government’s “family register” July 30.

The Naha Family Court in Okinawa Prefecture approved the alteration after legislation permitting such changes took effect on July 16.

Under the law, people diagnosed by two doctors as having a psychological makeup that is at odds with their biological sex can revise their registration if they are at least 20 years old, unmarried and childless, and no longer have working reproductive organs.

Around 8,000 Japanese have “gender identity disorder,” said a spokesperson for the organization gid.jp, which broke the news of the Naha case.

Jamaican dancehall-music star Beenie Man, who is touring Europe and the U.S. this year, issued an apology Aug. 2 for his violently anti-gay lyrics, but the British gay group OutRage! – his main nemesis – denounced the move as “insincere.”

“It has come to my attention that certain lyrics and recordings I have made in the past may have caused distress and outrage among people whose identities and lifestyles are different from my own,” Beenie Man said. “While my lyrics are very personal, I do not write them with the intent of purposefully hurting or maligning others, and I offer my sincerest apologies to those who might have been offended, threatened or hurt by my songs. As a human being, I renounce violence towards other human beings in every way, and pledge henceforth to uphold these values as I move forward in my career as an artist.”

Those lyrics include: “I’m dreaming of a new Jamaica, come to execute all the queers” and “Hang queer women with a long piece of rope.”

OutRage! pooh-poohed the statement.

“Beenie Man’s so-called apology is so vague that it does not even mention what he is apologizing for,” the group said. “It contains no explicit regret for his incitements to murder gay people, and no specific affirmation of his respect for homosexuals. [His] concert tours are under threat because of the OutRage! campaign. He is opportunistically issuing this statement to save his career from collapse.”