Same-sex couples began registering their partnerships in Zurich, Switzerland, July 1.

Zurich follows Geneva in setting up a gay partnership registry. Rights are extended in the areas of taxes, inheritance, hospital visits, social security and other matters.

The law was passed by 62 percent of the voters of Zurich canton (province) last September.

The first couple to tie the knot was Ernst Ostertag and Robert Rapp, both 73. They arrived at city hall in a horse-drawn carriage.

“It’s really a coronation of everything that the whole community has done in the past 50 years,” Ostertag told Swissinfo.

A national partnership-registration measure is working its way through parliament.

There are three nations that let same-sex couples marry under the ordinary marriage laws: Belgium, Canada and The Netherlands.

Police said half a million people turned out for Paris’ gay-pride parade June 28, led by openly gay mayor Bertrand Delanoë. Organizers said 700,000 people were present.

A representative of President Jacque Chirac’s conservative Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) party joined the parade for the first time.

Jean-Luc Romero, the party’s openly gay national secretary, told Sky News, “I have been a militant for gay rights for a long time, so it was natural that I be the first person to represent the UMP at this march.”

Meanwhile, Berlin’s 25th gay-pride parade attracted 600,000 people to the streets June 28. Openly gay Mayor Klaus Wowereit led the procession, carrying red roses and a pink teddy bear.

“There is no reason to hide,” Wowereit said. “We have a tolerant atmosphere here in Berlin.”

In Cologne July 6, 650,000 people turned out to watch 40,000 marchers and 90 floats in that city’s Christopher Street Day parade. Berlin Mayor Wowereit made the trip west to join that celebration as well.

About 200,000 people attended Vienna’s June 28 pride march — and 200 people marched under heavy police guard in Zagreb, Croatia. Many bystanders disparaged the Croatian group, local reports said.

The Gay Police Association (GPA) asked every police force in England, Scotland and Wales to allow gay officers to march in uniform in London’s gay-pride parade this year and 32 of them said OK, Glasgow’s Daily Record reported June 20.

Eleven forces in England and Wales said no and every police force in Scotland rejected the idea.

A spokesperson for the Association of Chief Police Officers of Scotland said the request would have been honored if the parade were held in Scotland, but, “Any Scottish officer wearing a police uniform in England would be presenting himself as an officer with full powers.”

A GPA spokesperson branded the decision “institutionally homophobic.”

The French polling company IFOP says the nation is becoming increasingly gay-friendly.

Sixty-one percent of people wouldn’t mind if their child turned out gay, up from 41 percent eight years ago.

Fifty-five percent of those questioned think same-sex couples should be allowed to marry, though only 41 percent think they should be allowed to adopt children.

A little more than 1,000 people were surveyed. Young people polled dramatically more pro-gay than retirees.

Children raised by lesbian mothers who used donor sperm turn out just like other kids, research by the Dutch-Speaking Free University in Brussels, Belgium, has confirmed.

According to the BBC, researchers studied 41 such children, average age 10, and detected no differences in their social adjustment or psychological well-being when compared with a control group of children conceived and raised by heterosexual parents.

The children’s teachers agreed with the assessment.

The study showed that most of the children are open about their family life and suffer no apparent stigmatization as a result.

The research was presented at the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology conference in Vienna.

Mérida, in the Mexican state of Yucatán, saw its first gay pride parade June 28.

About 200 people marched from Mejorada Park to the Plaza Grande led by entertainer Gonzalo España from the Freeway discothèque.

“During the hour-long march, which surprised pedestrians and business owners, the gays shouted their demands on various occasions,” said the newspaper Diario de Yucatán. “Some of the men wore women’s clothes.”

At the post-parade rally, España said there would be annual gay marches from now on because gays will not go back to being invisible.

Gay men in Bishkek, capital of the former Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan, are battling corrupt cops.

According to the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, police officers are routinely demanding hush money from gay men who place personal ads on the Internet or in the newspaper Blits Info.

Victims say they have been lured to apartments, interrogated, beaten, tortured and forced to turn over around $50 to prevent being outed to their families and employers.

Vladimir Tyupin, head of the local gay group Oasis, said a big part of the problem is that police officers are not paid enough to live on.

Interior Ministry Lieutenant Colonel Baish Ibraev said most Bishkek cops do not blackmail gays.