Canadian Justice Minister Irwin Cotler and his wife don’t see eye-to-eye on the government’s plan to extend same-sex-marriage rights nationwide, Cotler told a group of law students Jan. 28.

Same-sex marriage has been legalized by courts in eight of Canada’s 13 provinces and territories, and the federal government plans to pass legislation through Parliament this year to let same-sex couples marry everywhere.

“My wife and I have had long discussions on this,” Cotler told students at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, according to the Canadian Press wire service. “She’ll say, [give them] all the rights, all the obligations, etc., arising out of marriage and everything else. Just don’t call it ‘marriage.’

“[But], as soon as she began to better appreciate that what we’re talking about here is extending civil marriage to gays and lesbians, and not affecting religious marriage ... she’s coming around to also be supportive.”

Cotler said that “when it comes to ‘threshold protections’ against discrimination, you can’t cherry pick your way through. [O]ne cannot have lesser protections for one group of minorities,” he said.

The Caribbean island of Aruba, a dependency of the Netherlands, has refused to recognize the marriage of a Dutch lesbian couple who moved to the island.

The Netherlands is one of four nations in the world where same-sex marriage has been legalized. According to news reports, Dutch dependencies are legally obligated to recognize all marriages from the Netherlands.

Dutch Deputy Prime Minister Thom de Graaf and a group of parliamentarians reportedly flew to Aruba recently to attempt to resolve the stalemate.

Same-sex marriage also is legal in Belgium, eight Canadian provinces and territories, and one U.S. state.

Gay activist Ian Purcell has been appointed a Member of the Order of Australia, the Australian Associated Press reported Jan. 26.

Membership, which is bestowed by the Queen, is the nation’s highest honor. It recognizes outstanding achievement in important fields of endeavor and outstanding contributions to the nation and humanity.

“This award gives me the opportunity to say to our governments, ‘Look, why are you still dilly-dallying [on gay equality] – get on with it,’” Purcell said. “This is an opportunity to let people know that we have still got a way to go and there’s still work to do.”

One other gay activist, Tasmania’s Rodney Croome, is a member of the order. Three other gay activists have been awarded the lesser Medal of the Order of Australia.

The Canadian Forces OK’d performing same-sex weddings on military bases Jan. 19.

Full same-sex marriage has been legalized by court order in eight of Canada’s 13 provinces and territories. The federal government plans to redefine marriage nationally to include same-sex couples this year.

The military’s 150 chaplains won’t be required to marry same-sex couples if they don’t want to, but, in such cases, they will have to help the couple find a chaplain who will perform the ceremony.

A pink-triangle plaque was erected at the site of Italy’s only Nazi concentration camp Jan. 26 to commemorate gays killed by the Third Reich.

The plaque, at the San Sabba camp near Trieste, is Italy’s first official recognition of the Nazi’s homosexual victims.

Up to 15,000 gays are believed to have perished in the Holocaust.

Greek radio station Epikoinonia FM cancelled a gay radio program that has aired for five years after being fined 5,000 euros ($6,525) by the government’s Radio and Television Council, the Kathimerini newspaper reported Jan. 22.

The regulatory agency objected to ads for gay bars and condoms that ran during the program and denounced the show as “undoubtedly of bad quality.”

The radio station said it did not have the funds to risk more fines.

The owner of a Swedish anti-gay website is being prosecuted under a 2003 law that criminalizes threatening or insulting homosexuals.

Among other issues, content posted on Leif Liljeström’s Bibeltemplet (Bible Temple) site reportedly endorses punishing sodomy with the death penalty.

Police raided Liljeström’s home last June and confiscated computers, storage media and documents, according to local newspapers.

Liljeström’s lawyer will argue that the antigay-vilification law infringes freedom-of-speech guarantees.

An HIV-infected Swedish gay man, who was quarantined for 18 months at various times between 1995 and 2001 for allegedly refusing to have sex safely, was illegally deprived of his rights to liberty and security, the European Court of Human Rights ruled Jan. 25.

The man was awarded 12,000 euros ($15,576) in damages and 2,083 euros ($2,704) in costs.

The court said Sweden failed to prove it tried less-draconian measures to prevent the man from transmitting the virus. As such, compulsory isolation was not shown to be an action of last resort as required by Article 5 of the European Convention on Human Rights.