The Australian Capital Territory will enact a civil union law granting registered opposite- and same-sex couples the rights and obligations of marriage.

The government introduced the necessary legislation in the ACT Assembly on March 28.

“Civil union legislation will give social and legal recognition to couples who are, for various reasons, currently denied it,” said ACT Chief Minister Jon Stanhope. “The ACT government is committed to equality.”

Australia has a national law limiting marriage to opposite-sex couplings, and federal Attorney General Philip Ruddock said the federal government will attempt to block the Capital Territory from using federally licensed marriage celebrants to conduct same-sex union ceremonies.

But Ruddock said the feds are OK with states and territories granting same-sex couples the rights of marriage as long as the laws don’t “create confusion over the distinction between marriage and same-sex relationships,” The Age newspaper reported.

Colombian President Álvaro Uribe supports granting same-sex couples spousal rights in areas such as inheritance and health care.

During a meeting with college students March 25, Uribe was asked, “Will you and your political team support legislation to provide civil rights and Social Security [health care] to same-sex partners?”

He responded: “I will be completely sincere. First topic, marriage: No. Second topic, adoption: No. Inheritance rights: Yes. Social Security: Yes.”

Uribe added that he was prepared to grant same-sex couples access to Social Security benefits “immediately” and to pension benefits “gradually.” The latter will take time “due to the country’s fiscal problems,” he said, according to a report in El Tiempo.

On March 29, the government responded to Uribe’s comments by throwing its support behind a bill already pending in the Senate. The measure grants same-sex couples access to spousal rights in the areas of inheritance, division of property, health care and pensions.

A recent Gallup Poll found that 77 percent of Colombians oppose recognition of same-sex unions.

A Spanish judge who refused to let two British same-sex couples marry in Spain faces an appeal by the Alicante prosecutor’s office, typicallyspanish.com reported.

Judge Laura Alabau reportedly refused to let the couples marry because Spain grants same-sex couples access to full marriage while the United Kingdom offers only civil partnerships (which nonetheless grant all rights of marriage).

The prosecutor’s office said Spain indeed permits marriages between two foreigners as long as at least one of them resides in Spain, regardless of the laws of other nations.

Swaziland’s minister of justice and constitutional affairs, Prince David Dlamini, said March 25 that there will be no same-sex marriages in Swaziland.

“The constitution reflects the custom, culture as well as the religious tendencies of our people,” he said. “Swaziland is not about to endorse human sexuality at a time when a number of African countries are making specific legal provisions banning such a practice.”

Family is not about bulls inseminating cows, former Czech President Vaclav Havel suggested March 27.

He was speaking to the Czech News Agency about the Chamber of Deputies’ March 15 override of President Vaclav Klaus’ veto of a same-sex partnership bill.

“I was most intrigued in the debate by the absurd ideology advocated by the Christian Democrats and Klaus, who argue that family should have advantages since, unlike homosexual couples, it brings children to life,” Havel said. “This is the concept of family as a sort of calf shed in which bulls can inseminate cows so that calves are born.”

Klaus has denounced the override as “a defeat for all of us who believe that the family in our society is fundamental, unique, unrivaled.”

Polling suggests that 62 percent of Czechs support same-sex partnership registration.

Taiwan’s interior minister, Lee Yi-Yang, announced March 22 that the Domestic Violence Prevention Law is applicable to same-sex couples, the Taipei Times reported.

The determination was made public as legislators reviewed the law in a Judiciary Committee meeting.

Speaking in support of the move, Legislator Kuo Lin-Yung said gays and lesbians “have been derided, persecuted and constrained in the past, but now they have begun to speak out [and] must now be equally protected by the law.”

British lesbian Juliet Wilson will spend three years in prison for pouring boiling bleach over her sleeping lover, Maxine Grizzle, the BBC reported March 24.

Wilson was upset that Grizzle planned to meet up with an ex-lover.

“I went to sleep and I didn’t know she had got out of bed. I was woken up by some hot thing over me,” Grizzle told Wood Green Crown Court in the North London borough of Haringey.

Grizzle went to a mirror and said it seemed that her face was coming off. She said she shouted, “Help me … I’m burning,” and Wilson replied: “Help you? I wouldn’t spit on you.”

Grizzle later forgave Wilson and asked the judge for leniency, which resulted in the sentence being shortened, the BBC said.