Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov said July 27 that he will never permit a Pride parade in the city because he wants “to protect the feelings of Muscovites, who would definitely oppose such an event.”

Activists are planning the city’s first parade in May 2006 on the 13th anniversary of the legalization of gay sex.

Organizers Nikolay Alexeyev and Evgeniya Debryanskaya said they will fight Luzhkov all the way to the European Court of Human Rights, if necessary.

Among Australian Christians, Roman Catholics are the least homophobic, a new Australia Institute study has found.

Two-thirds of Baptists and evangelical Christians told pollsters homosexuality is immoral, compared with only one-third of Catholics. Members of the Anglican and Uniting churches scored similarly gay-friendly.

Nonreligious people were the least anti-gay of all, with only 19 percent calling homosexuality immoral.

The survey, which questioned 25,000 people, revealed that residents of central and southwestern Queensland state, western Tasmania and the Sunshine and Gold coasts near Brisbane are the least tolerant. The gay-friendliest areas are the urban cores of Melbourne and Perth.

Other findings included: Overall, 35 percent of Australians consider gay sex immoral. Older people and less-educated people are more homophobic than younger people and people who spent more time in school. Women are less anti-gay than men. Boys between ages 14 and 17 are more homophobic (43 percent) than girls of the same age (23 percent). Teenage boys also are more homophobic than young and middle-aged adults in general.

Danish gay and bisexual men apparently have fallen off the safe-sex wagon. HIV infections hit an all-time high last year.

There were 159 cases of HIV transmission between men who have sex with men in 2004, compared with 114 in 2003 and 92 in 2002.

“This is quite serious,” Stop AIDS’ Jakob Haff told the newspaper Berlingske Tidende. “We could be on the brink of a renewed outbreak of the epidemic.”

Experts attributed the increase in part to the newer HIV treatments that allow HIV-infected people to stay healthy and sexually active.

“There are actually more HIV-positive[s] in the pool of sexually active men,” said the National Board of Health’s Dr. Jan Fouchard. “At the same time, those infected are no longer sickly or wan, so they don’t have the same shock effect.”

Amnesty International said Aug. 2 that it is worried about gay activists in Uganda following the nation’s recent passage of a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage.

The organization said activist Victor Juliet Mukasa, chair of Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG), fears for her safety after her house in a Kampala suburb was raided July 20.

Without displaying a search warrant, local officials seized documents and other material. Another lesbian activist who was present during the raid was arrested and taken to a police station where “she was subjected to humiliating and degrading treatment,” and then released, Amnesty said.

“Amnesty International is concerned that the above incidents add to a pattern of abuse of their [gays’] right not to be discriminated against on the basis of sexual orientation, the right to freedom, security and inviolability of the human person, respect for private life, protection of privacy of the home and freedom of association and expression,” the group said.

Polish activist Robert Biedron was fined $181 by a district court in Warmia-Masuria Province on Aug. 2 for insulting Roman Catholics.

Biedron, president of Campaign Against Homophobia, had said of Polish Family Association activist Dorota Ekes, “[Her words] mirror in full the fascist-nationalistic-Catholic character of the witch hunt against homosexuals.”

Ekes, in an interview with the daily newspaper Nasz Dziennik, had said: “Homosexuality is an inversion of ideas and a threat to a healthy family. If somebody bears this illness, they should be aware in advance that they will be forbidden to perform certain activities, which particularly concerns a function of a teacher who educates our children and shapes their consciences, and in a sense also social ideas.”

Biedron learned of the fine from the media.

“I had no possibility to defend myself, and the sentence was reached in a record time of 12 days, at closed session,” he said.

Qatar’s heir apparent, Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al-Thani, and two other Qataris were banned from London’s G.A.Y. nightclub for a month due to drunk and disorderly behavior, Aljazeera.com claimed July 31.

The report quoted another Web site, Islamonline.net, as saying that Tamim, 25, and the other two individuals got into a physical fight with local youths. It said Tamim and his “partner” were not charged in the incident.

The article that Aljazeera.com claimed to be quoting could not be located on Islamonline.net on July 31, the same day it allegedly appeared there. The story was not reported anywhere else and could not be confirmed.

Aljazeera.com is not connected to Aljazeera.net, the Web site of the well-known Arabic TV news channel.