Australian Prime Minister John Howard’s proposed ban on same-sex marriage passed the Senate Aug. 12. The vote was 38-7. It previously cleared the House of Representatives.

Activists called the legislation possibly unconstitutional.

“We are seriously considering the possibility of a high court challenge,” said Rodney Croome of the Equal Rights Network. “This is a very dark day in Australian history.”

Thirty-nine members of Nepal’s GLBT Blue Diamond Society (BDS) were arrested at locations around Kathmandu Aug. 8 and taken to the Hanuman Dhoka police station where they were “brutally” beaten, the group reported Aug. 10.

Police said they were acting on complaints of sexual assaults against pedestrians, but BDS denied its members engaged in any inappropriate behavior.

“They have been detained till now without food and have been treated inhumanely without having any faults, and we, [the] Blue Diamond Society, are very concerned,” the group said.

Blue Diamond Director Sunil Pant urged the government to “release our captured members without any conditions.”

“Blue Diamond Society is involved in purely promoting human rights and HIV awareness among sexual minorities in Nepal without causing harm to anyone,” he said.

The Kaos GL Cultural Center in Ankara, Turkey, was attacked by anti-gay vandals in late July.

Two pieces of cement were thrown through the center’s office windows and landed on the conference-room table. No other tenants of the building were vandalized.

“This is clearly an intrusion and threat to the visibility and rights of the Turkish LGBT community,” the organization said in a press statement. “As we [have] experienced all over the world, the more visible the freedom of homosexuals, the [more] intensified [is the] homophobia and hatred towards us.”

Kaos GL also publishes a bimonthly GLBT magazine.

Gay Canadian MP Svend Robinson, who resigned after stealing a $50,000 ring from a jewelry sale in April, pleaded guilty Aug. 6. He was sentenced to 100 hours of community service.

British Columbia Provincial Court Judge Ronald Fratkin granted Robinson a conditional discharge. He will have no criminal record.

“What he has gone through is enough,” Fratkin said. “He’s fallen a long way and embarrassed himself.”

Robinson served in Parliament for 25 years.

A screaming mob of homophobes chased members of Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe away from their booth at the Zimbabwe International Book Fair Aug. 2, NewZimbabwe.com reported.

Three members of the group said they were attacked physically.

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe has made repeated, vociferously anti-gay public comments in recent years.

A transsexual bank clerk won Britain’s fifth series of “Big Brother” Aug. 7, getting 74 percent of viewers’ votes.

Nadia Almada, 27, collected about $116,000.

“There’s no words that could show the happiness inside me,” she said.

Almada was not out as a transsexual during the 70 days of filming.

Hundreds of people marched in the 14th annual Pride parade in Belfast, Northern Ireland, Aug. 7.

A band of protesters stood outside City Hall and called for the march to be banned because of “the offensive nature of this parade [and] what it promotes,” said protester Jonathan Larner.

But an organizer from the Northern Ireland Gay Rights Association told the BBC: “A lot more people are coming out because they see our visibility and that we can walk the streets here. That gives these young, shy people – who have no other sorts of information – the courage to say who they are.”

The majority of Portuguese people do not support same-sex civil marriage, a poll has found.

The scientific telephone survey, conducted in late July by Aximage, found that 55 percent of the population opposes same-sex marriage, 35 percent supports it and 10 percent has no opinion.

The results were reported in the Aug. 8 issue of the daily newspaper Correio da Manhã.

Among those who favor same-sex marriage, 54 percent also approve of adoption by gay-male couples and 62 percent approve of adoption by lesbian couples – if a child has been abandoned by its biological parents.

Support for same-sex marriage polled higher than average among city dwellers (41 percent), people under age 30 (68 percent), women (39 percent), college graduates (50 percent), wealthy people (46 percent) and people who have a job (44 percent).