Christian activist organizations in the United States are sending money to Canada in an attempt to thwart Parliament’s legalization of same-sex marriage.

Courts already have legalized same-sex marriage in eight of Canada’s 13 provinces and territories. Passage of a bill pending in Parliament would extend marriage rights to the other five provinces and territories.

“[We will spend] whatever it takes. The family is too important,” said Patrick Korten, vice president of communications for the Knights of Columbus head office in New Haven, Conn., in an interview with the Montreal Gazette.

The Knights recently spent $64,262 to print 2 million anti-same-sex-marriage postcards that were distributed in churches across Canada.

Focus on the Family has sent hundreds of thousands of dollars to the smaller Focus on the Family (Canada) Association.

“The American people do not want same-sex marriage,” founder James Dobson said recently. “I would hope that Canadians who also do not want same-sex marriage would be encouraged by what has happened down here.”

Alex Munter of Canadians for Equal Marriage told the Gazette he was sure most Canadians do not approve of American right-wingers interfering in Canadian affairs.

“This is fundamentally an issue about Canadian values and the Canadian Charter of Rights,” he said. “Do we want the American far right engaged in that debate? I would say no and I would think most Canadians would say no.”

Justice Minister Irwin Cotler said he also doesn’t approve of the interference although there’s nothing he can do to stop it.

“From a legal perspective, there’s nothing we can do about it,” he told reporters Feb. 9. “We live in a global universe and ideas cross borders and it’s a free-speech issue. ... I just would like to maintain the integrity of the Canadian political culture and the Canadian political debate and not see it skewered by the kinds of lobbying that comes from the States.”

The apparent ringleader in the 2001 killing of a naked gay man in a cruisy Vancouver, Canada, park received only a six-year prison sentence Feb. 8.

Local gay activists criticized the length of the sentence and British Columbia Supreme Court Justice Mary Humphries, who determined there was no evidence the killing of Aaron Webster near Stanley Park’s cruising trails was a hate crime.

Ryan Cran, 23, and at least two other men beat Webster, 41, with baseball bats, a golf club and a pool cue.

Gay former Member of Parliament Svend Robinson called on B.C. Attorney General Geoff Plant to review the case and remind prosecutors to use hate-crime laws.

“I hope that out of the tragedy of Aaron Webster’s death will come a renewed determination ... that never again will the Crown fail to recognize the reality of gay-bashing,” Robinson told the Canadian Press news service. “Six years ... is an outrage. What message does that send about the values of the lives of gay people?”

Canada’s national gay lobby group, Egale, called for a formal inquiry into the sentence.

“The criminal justice system needs a good shake-up,” said Egale’s Tami Starlight. “The circumstances leave no doubt that this murder was a hate crime and the justice system seems not to want to recognize this.”

Egale board member Stephen Lock called the sentence “an outrageous example of the state’s refusal to acknowledge systemic violence against gay men.”

Two youths previously pleaded guilty in the case and were sentenced to two years in jail and a year of house arrest. A third man was acquitted.

A third of HIV-positive gay men and their HIV-negative boyfriends have unprotected anal sex together – especially after the positive partner’s latest blood tests have shown he has no detectable viral load, a University of New South Wales study has found.

The study looked at 119 “serodiscordant” gay couples in Sydney, Australia. Seventy percent of the 37 couples who practiced unsafe sex did so only when testing showed that HIV could not be detected in the positive partner’s blood, a common result of taking a combination of anti-HIV medications.

Susan Kippax, director of the National Centre in HIV Social Research, told the Australian Associated Press that “it’s certainly not a foolproof strategy and it’s not one that we’re advocating.”

But, she added, “it’s not a strategy that people should go shock-horror about. ... Some men have worked out strategies for reducing, but not eliminating, the risk. ... If you give people enough knowledge, they’ll fashion strategies that both reduce risk and are something they can manage.”

A Swedish pastor sentenced to a month in prison for a sermon in which he called homosexuality “a cancerous tumor on the body of society” saw his sentence overturned on appeal Feb. 11.

A district court had convicted Åke Green of “agitation against a group” under a law that bans threatening or expressing contempt for a group of people based on their race, color, national or ethnic origin, religion or sexual orientation.

But the Court of Appeal in Jönköping said Green was merely interpreting the Bible and did not use his role as a preacher “as a cover for attacking homosexuals.”

The head of the national gay-rights group RFSL (National Federation for Sexual Equality), Maria Sjödin, called the new ruling “outrageous.”

“Agitation, regardless whether it is based on Nazism or religious grounds, legitimizes violence,” she said. “The verdict would hardly have been the same if Åke Green had agitated against groups such as Jews or blacks. There should not be any public arenas where agitation against homosexuals is freely allowed.”

Prosecutors said they might appeal to Sweden’s Supreme Court.