South Africa’s Supreme Court of Appeal Nov. 30 declared the opposite-sex, common-law definition of marriage unconstitutional. South Africa’s post-apartheid Constitution bans all discrimination based on sexual orientation.

Marié Fourie and Cecelia Bonthuys of Pretoria sued to have their 2002 union recognized as a marriage after the Department of Home Affairs refused to register it. In an earlier ruling, the Pretoria High Court had sided with the department.

Judge of Appeal Edwin Cameron, who is openly gay and openly HIV-positive, wrote that the definition of marriage must be rewritten to read, “Marriage is the union of two persons to the exclusion of all others for life.”

The Supreme Court’s 4-1 ruling has immediate effect on the definition of marriage but several marriage-related laws still need to be changed. GLBT activists said they will file legal actions to speed up that process.

“We have to go ahead with legal action to fix up those somewhat more minor legal problems and we foresee that within the next 12 months or so, same-sex couples will indeed be married,” said Evert Knoesen of the Lesbian and Gay Equality Project.

Full same-sex marriage currently is legal in Belgium, the Netherlands, six Canadian provinces, one Canadian territory and the U.S. state of Massachusetts.

The city council of the British gay resort Brighton and Hove urged retailers Nov. 25 to stop selling recordings by numerous Jamaican dancehall singers whose lyrics promote murder of gays.

The council ordered the city’s chief executive to write to the large record-store chains Virgin Megastore, HMV and MVC and suggest they pull such music from their shelves.

Councilors also will ask the city’s three members of Parliament to lobby the United Kingdom government to ban incitement to hatred against GLBT people.

The antigay singers include Sizzla (“Burn the man who rides a man from behind”), Elephant Man (“Queers must be killed”), Vybz Kartel (“Kartel puts one [a bullet] in a queer’s spine”), Beenie Man (“I’m dreaming of a new Jamaica, come to execute all the queers”), Buju Banton, T.O.K., Bounty Killer and Capleton.

There are 5 million to 12.5 million gay men in China — 2 percent to 4 percent of the male population — the Ministry of Health said Dec. 2.

It estimated that around 1.35 percent of them are infected with HIV, based on limited testing.

The statistics were a first for China.

According to People’s Daily, “information on gay people is being collected in each province” via 42 “monitoring spots.”

The paper said condoms are being given away for free and HIV-prevention information is being disseminated.

“The number of female homosexuals, also called lesbians, is much less than that of males,” according to a version of the story that ran on the News Guangdong Web site.

A Nigerian man is in custody and his rumored male lover is on the lam after Muslim youth reportedly forced the first man to confess to “homosexualism,” the Vanguard newspaper reported Nov. 28.

A Shariah court in Keffi issued a bench warrant for construction-company supervisor Michael Ifediora Nwokomah after businessman Mallam Abdullahi Ibrahim allegedly acknowledged that the couple has been having sex “for some time,” the newspaper said.

The Vanguard said Ibrahim confessed after the youths “almost lynched” him. The local district head intervened to halt the lynching and turned Ibrahim over to police.

Nwokomah was at work and went into hiding when he heard what had happened, the report said.

Trial will be delayed until the two men can be tried together, the paper said. Punishment is death by stoning.

The Philippines’ most Islamic city, Marawi City, has banned gays from going out in public wearing female attire, makeup, earrings “or other ornaments to express their inclinations for femininity,” the Philippine Star reported Dec. 4.

The city council also banned skintight blue jeans, tube tops and other skimpy attire. Women must not “induce impure thoughts or lustful desires.”

Mayor Omar Solitario Ali said the moves are part of a “cleaning and cleansing” drive to improve the city’s image.

People who violate the rules will have paint dumped on their heads by the muttawa, the religious police.

Officials also banned video games and prohibited karaoke bars from being located near mosques or schools.

Located in the southern Philippines, Marawi City has a population of 123,295, according to its official Web site.

The Canadian government erred in 2000 when it extended pension rights to same-sex couples but refused to make them retroactive to the date that equality guarantees were enshrined in Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Ontario’s highest court ruled Nov. 26.

“Excluding many of those who were intended to be included is not rationally connected to the objective of the law, which is to end the discriminatory exclusion of same-sex partners from [the Canadian Pension Plan],” the Court of Appeal declared.

Equality guarantees were inserted in the charter on April 17, 1985, but the government arbitrarily chose 1998 as the start date for retroactive payments.

The ruling, which could be appealed to the Supreme Court of Canada, affects about 1,500 gays and lesbians and could result in payments of more than $90 million.