Thousands of GLBTs marched in Johannesburg, South Africa’s 15th Pride parade Sept. 25.

Police failed to make good on their threat to arrest drag queens for violation of the nation’s 1993 Gatherings Act. It prohibits wearing a disguise, mask or anything else that obscures facial features while participating in a gathering, march or protest.

March organizers had threatened legal action if the police nabbed the crossdressers. South Africa’s constitution is one of only a handful in the world that ban discrimination based on sexual orientation.

Singapore’s first big drag pageant, Miss Tiffany Singapore, drew a sellout audience of 1,350 people Sept. 26 to see 13 finalists compete.

Jesse Rogers, 28, walked away with the crown and the equivalent of $2,940 in prize money. She will represent Thailand in the Miss Tiffany Universe contest in Bangkok.

The event, held at one of the city’s biggest restaurants, raised the equivalent of $70,600 for donation to the poor.

“This was a groundbreaking event considering the whole family values thing,” organizer S. Moganaruban of the charity group Singapore Amalgamated Services Co-operative Organisation told the Agence France-Presse news wire.

France’s first gay TV network, PinkTV, launches Oct. 25 on cable and satellite. It will cost about $11 a month.

The network’s sportscaster is a miniskirt-wearing crossdresser, the Wonder Woman series will air every evening and porn will be presented overnight.

The channel also will offer Japanese manga cartoons, movies, documentaries, music shows, experimental videos, talk shows and “Queer As Folk,” according to the Associated Press.

An Austrian Roman Catholic bishop resigned Sept. 30 in the wake of a gay-sex scandal at a seminary in his diocese.

Bishop Kurt Krenn, 68, stepped down after an investigation at the St. Pölten diocesan seminary found digital images of kiddie porn, gay sadomasochistic porn, sex with animals, and students kissing and fondling each other and their male teachers.

The Vatican closed the seminary, which has been in operation since 1455, in August.

A seminarian from Poland was convicted of possessing child pornography and given a six-month suspended jail sentence.

Iran has OK’d sex-change surgery for gender identity disorder, Middle East Online reported Sept. 30.

A permit from the state medical office is required to access the surgery, which “may” be subsidized by the state health organization, the report said.

The cost is about $7,500 for female-to-male surgery and $3,000 for male-to-female surgery.

Once surgery is complete, the individual is given a new birth certificate and national identity card.

The Anglican Church of Uganda is returning all money donated recently by agencies of the Episcopal Church, the American branch of Anglicanism, to protest the election of openly gay Gene Robinson as bishop of the New Hampshire diocese last year.

“Please do not raise any more money on our behalf,” Archbishop Henry Luke Orombi wrote.

Historically, African Anglican dioceses have relied on donations from the West.

Saskatchewan likely will be the seventh Canadian province or territory to legalize same-sex marriage.

A lesbian couple from Saskatoon – Nicole White and Julie Richards – announced plans to sue the provincial and federal governments after they were denied a marriage license.

Over the past 17 months, court rulings have legalized full same-sex marriage in British Columbia, Manitoba, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Quebec and the Yukon Territory, which account for 82 percent of Canada’s population.

The federal government is working on changing federal law to permit same-sex marriage nationwide. It also is unavailable in Alberta, the Northwest Territories, New Brunswick, Newfoundland, Nunavut and Prince Edward Island.

Full same-sex marriage also is permitted in Belgium, the Netherlands and the U.S. state of Massachusetts. Spain is expected to be the next country to grant same-sex couples full access to the institution.

A Melbourne, Australia, man who had his penis and testicles removed 16 years ago and became a woman is now suing the medical team that performed the surgery, saying he was misdiagnosed as a transsexual.

Alan Finch says the Southern Health hospital network and Monash Medical Center’s gender-identity clinic were negligent when they declared him a candidate for sex-change surgery. Instead, he says, he was suffering psychological problems that now have resolved. Finch has resumed living as a man.

“There’s not enough money in the Reserve Bank [to compensate me],” Finch told the Australian Associated Press. “[But] I have a point to prove here for other people so these doctors think twice.”