The United Kingdom’s Royal Navy is partnering with leading gay-rights group Stonewall in an effort to increase gay enlistment and encourage more sailors to come out of the closet, The Sunday Times reported.

Vice-Admiral Sir James Burnell-Nugent said sailors’ coming out would contribute to a culture in which “all our people are valued for themselves and are thus able to give 100 percent to their job.”

As a part of the campaign, the Navy will advertise in the biweekly gay newspaper The Pink Paper.

“[The ads] will show those who are gay and are uncomfortable about the environment [here] that our position on diversity is not just empty talk,” said Commodore Paul Docherty. “It is quite possible that we will have a gay admiral in the fullness of time. ... We have had gay admirals in the past but they haven’t come out.”

The U.K. lifted its military gay ban in 2000.

In related news, the Ministry of Defence announced Feb. 20 that same-sex couples who register under the Civil Partnership Act that comes into force in December will be allowed to live in military family housing.

An MoD spokesperson told the Telegraph newspaper, “If same-sex couples commit themselves to a registered civil partnership that is founded in statute and provides rights and obligations that are comparable to a marriage, the MoD would expect to afford the same recognition in its own policies towards service personnel.”

In Malaysia, meanwhile, the head of the Royal Malaysian Navy, Adm. Datuk Sri Mohamed Anwar bin Haji Mohamed Nor, told the New Straits Times that Malaysia absolutely will not follow the U.K.’s lead.

“We do not condone such acts,” Anwar said. “The RMN will never accept them [gays] as we have to protect the Navy.”

The RMN is in the process of distributing 10,000 copies of an Islamic education book from the Army’s Religious Corps to all Muslim Navy personnel, Anwar said.

The 152-page book covers the basic principles of the faith and offers detailed instructions on how to conduct prayers while on a ship or the battlefield, the New Straits Times said.

Same-sex couples in the United Kingdom will be able to register their relationships and receive a variety of spousal rights after the Civil Partnership Act comes into effect Dec. 5.

Couples can get hitched at a register office starting Dec. 21 – 15 days after giving notice to the office of their intention to do so.

Registered partners will receive rights and obligations in areas such as accident compensation, life insurance, immigration, inheritance, intestacy, pensions, taxation, tenancy, spouse and child support and workplace benefits.

Couples who have entered a legal same-sex union overseas will not need to re-register in the U.K. to be recognized.

There will be a formal, court-based process for dissolution of a civil partnership.

A judge in Brazil’s Rio Grande do Sul state, which registers same-sex civil unions, has granted a divorce to a formerly unioned couple.

Government prosecutors had argued against allowing the divorce saying it would imply there had been a marriage.

But Family and Inheritance Court Judge Roberto Arriada Lorea declared that “to assign a differential treatment to homosexuals would be disrespectful to the principle of equality.”

“It would be absurd to accept that the judicial power closes its eyes not only to changes that are taking place in our society, but also to the federal Constitution that rules our nation,” he said. “In the absence of explicit legislation, there is no reason to unfairly judge what happens in ‘social minorities’ that are already heavily discriminated against.”

Canada’s British Columbia Court of Appeal Feb. 18 rescinded more than $1 million in government funding that had allowed the Vancouver gay bookstore Little Sisters Book and Art Emporium to mount ongoing challenges to customs seizures of gay erotica from the United States.

“Little Sisters assumed the role of watchdog over Customs,” Justice Allan Thackray wrote. “The fact is that the public has not appointed Little Sisters to this role. Little Sisters not only wants to have Customs found to have incorrectly classified the books in question but wants to be financed as the instrument to reform Customs.”

A trial court had given the bookstore the money to challenge seizures of books and comic books depicting homosexual sadomasochism.

Canadian courts can order public funding of seemingly solid legal challenges that raise issues of public importance if a litigant cannot afford to pay for the process.

Still upset over the ordination in New Hampshire of a gay bishop who lives with his lover and over church blessings of same-sex unions in British Columbia, the worldwide Anglican Communion Feb. 24 urged the U.S. Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada to withdraw their representatives from the Anglican Consultative Council, a key governing body of the communion.

The decision came at the end of a meeting in Northern Ireland of most of the 77-million-member church’s primates.

In 1998, Anglican bishops declared gay sex to be “incompatible with Scripture.”

The U.S. and Canadian church hierarchies said they are studying the request, which many news reports mischaracterized as an order.