The Sandals Caribbean resorts dropped their ban on gay couples Oct. 11, London’s The Guardian reported. The announcement came just before a spokesperson for the chain was to appear on the BBC to defend the ban. The company had been prohibited from advertising on London’s subway by Mayor Ken Livingstone because of the policy.

Sandals banned gays from resorts in Antigua, the Bahamas, Barbados, Cuba, Jamaica and St. Lucia, reports said.

Delegates to the General Synod of Australia’s Anglican Church resolved Oct. 7 to reject church blessings of same-sex couples and the ordination of sexually active gays.

The delegates also praised the nation’s recently enacted ban on same-sex marriage.

The moves put the Australian church at odds with Canada’s Anglican church and the U.S. Episcopal Church, the American branch of Anglicanism. Some U.S. and Canadian dioceses bless same-sex unions and the U.S. church allowed the election of an openly gay bishop in the New Hampshire diocese.

Australian gay activists say they fear renewed attacks on the human rights of GLBT people following the Oct. 10 reelection of conservative Prime Minister John Howard.

Howard’s coalition increased its majority in the House of Representatives and looks set to take control of the Senate, with help from the fundamentalist Christian party Family First. Full election results will not be available until Oct. 22.

“The recent same-sex marriage ban was a walk in the park compared to what’s in store,” said leading national activist Rodney Croome of the Tasmanian Gay and Lesbian Rights Group. “Gay parenting, gay characters on television, gay partnership registries and gay antibias laws will all now be in the government’s sights.”

Croome also lamented the election of antigay campaigner Michael Ferguson to the House of Representatives.

“The practical, down-to-earth people of Ferguson’s Tasmanian electorate will be shocked by the fundamentalism of their new representative,” he said. “Already Ferguson has thanked Jesus for his election.”

Croome said “politicians wearing religion on their sleeve like this is something Australian electors are not used to, but will sadly be seeing a lot more of.”

Toronto Police Chief Julian Fantino appears on the cover of this month’s Fab, a Toronto gay magazine, surrounded by models dressed as the pop group The Village People.

“The Village People – that’s such a police icon, and at the same time it’s rooted in gay culture,” Fab editor Mitchel Raphael told the Globe and Mail newspaper. “The chief said: ‘Oh, The Village People. My wife dances to the YMCA.’ I think when he made the association that The Village People are so mainstream and that it would be something meaningful to the gay community, he said that’s great.”

Fantino arrived at his Toronto job with antigay baggage from his days as police chief of London, Ontario, where he created an antipedophilia task force that mainstream gay activists denounced as “a gay witch hunt.”

A gay man who was called a “fifi” by a car salesperson in Sorel, Quebec, was awarded $1,000 (U.S. $799) by the provincial Human Rights Tribunal Oct. 11.

The tribunal said Marcel Bardier at the Roger Poirier Automobile dealership used “hurtful and vexatious terms.”

“The use of this term wounds and adds to the disgrace and lack of respect of human dignity [of] a person, homosexuals in particular,” Judge Michèle Pauzé wrote.

The auto dealership also was ordered to pay Dominique Lanthier expenses and interest. Sorel is about 42 miles northeast of Montreal.

The Netherlands’ Social and Cultural Planning Office thinks acceptance of gay people may be on the decline and has launched a study to look at the matter.

The office is particularly upset about the recent rejection of the gay youth magazine Expreszo by scores of Christian and immigrant-oriented schools.

Surveys show a majority of Dutch residents believe the magazine should be distributed to help combat antigay discrimination.

Some school officials said they were upset about a “tolerance test” in the magazine that refers to seeing a neighbor having sex with a goat.

Syphilis cases increased 20 percent in Germany last year.

Of the 2,932 cases diagnosed in 2003, 90 percent were among men and 75 percent were among gay men.

Berlin saw the highest number of infections, followed by Hamburg, Frankfurt, Cologne and Munich.

A third of the cases occurred among people who already had been cured of the disease earlier in the year.

A 66-year-old British man, Kenneth Watson, was sent to jail for a year in Morocco Oct. 4 after being caught having sex with two young men ages 16 and 18. The 18-year-old also was jailed. The 16-year-old, a minor, was released. The sentence was handed down by a court in the southern city of Taroudant.

Gay sex is both illegal and reportedly widely practiced in Morocco.