South Africa’s Human Rights Commission has criticized the government’s Civil Union Bill, which would create a separate institution essentially identical to marriage for same-sex couples.

The commission said the bill is unconstitutional, discriminatory and stigmatizing. It said the government should instead amend the Marriage Act to allow same-sex marriage.

The bill was introduced in response to a 2005 Constitutional Court ruling that gave legislators until Dec. 1 of this year to end the Marriage Act’s discrimination against same-sex couples.

If lawmakers do not take satisfactory action by that date, the court said the Marriage Act automatically will be construed to allow same-sex marriage.

On Oct. 17, gay groups staged a march and picket against the Civil Union Bill in Pretoria.

“Civil partnerships are not equivalent to marriage. They entrench institutional segregation in our law and a separate, inferior status for gay relationships,” one of the organizers, Alex Ringelman, told The Independent newspaper.

In a reversal of policy, the Netherlands announced Oct. 17 it will welcome most if not all gay Iranian immigrants.

Immigration Minister Rita Verdonk previously had taken the position that Iranian gays were not at risk of government persecution or execution if they lived their lives discreetly.

Verdonk said she had a change of heart after reading parts of an upcoming Human Rights Watch report on Iran’s abuse of homosexuals.

A recent HRW press release stated that the organization “has documented torture and executions for homosexual conduct in Iran.”

HRW has been under pressure from the British gay group OutRage! and other activists to renounce its agnostic position on Iran’s apparent executions of gay men.

One gay Iranian exile group, Sweden-based Homan, claims there have been some 4,000 such executions since the 1979 revolution installed a religious government.

A marriage registrar in the Canadian province of Manitoba has sued the province alleging religious discrimination after he was stripped of his position for refusing to conduct same-sex marriages.

Kevin Kisilowsky’s case will be heard by Manitoba’s Court of Queen’s Bench. The Manitoba Human Rights Commission previously rejected a similar complaint from Kisilowsky.

Canadian provinces began legalizing same-sex marriage in 2003, and the federal Parliament did so nationwide in 2005.

The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention declared Oct. 11 that 11 men jailed for more than a year in Cameroon while awaiting trial on sodomy charges were arbitrarily deprived of their freedom in violation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

The ruling came on a complaint filed on the men’s behalf by the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission and the International Commission of Jurists.

The 11 victims were nabbed at a gay bar in May 2005. Some were eventually convicted, others were acquitted and one died of AIDS complications while in jail awaiting trial. The sentences for sodomy were shorter than the period of time the convicted men spent incarcerated before trial, so they were released this past summer.

The Belarus Prosecutor General’s Office on Oct. 11 dropped pornography charges against Reimo Smits, former second secretary of the Latvian Embassy.

The office apparently didn’t say why the charges were dropped following “a preliminary criminal investigation.”

In July, Belarus state television aired excerpts from a gay-sex tape, reportedly claiming it depicted Smits and had been seized from his Minsk apartment. Officials said the Belarus KGB raided Smits’ residence because he was distributing porn. The 10-minute TV report reportedly described the several black-and-white snippets, seemingly captured by a hidden camera, as “a dirty homosexual orgy.” Smits promptly returned to Latvia.

Latvian officials later suggested Belarus fabricated the sex and porn allegations because Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko disapproves of diplomats who promote democracy in his nation. Smits was a contact person for Belarus’ democratic opposition. Latvia also called the raid on Smits’ residence a “breach of the Vienna Convention because it was a violation of the private space of our diplomat.”

The Natural History Museum in Oslo, Norway, is presenting an exhibition on animals who engage in gay sex.

Project leader Geir Søli told Reuters that “homosexuality has been observed for more than 1,500 animal species,” including giraffes, penguins, parrots, beetles, whales, swans and bonobos.

“Bonobos are bisexuals, all of them,” he told the wire service.

Museum literature accompanying the exhibit states that homosexuality is found throughout the animal kingdom and “is not against nature.”

Some Christian groups have denounced the exhibit.

The “first ever … seminar on gay rights” has been held in Mozambique, the Agência de Informação de Moçambique (AIM) reported Oct. 13.

As a result, a gay “movement” likely will be launched within weeks, the report said.

There is disagreement, AIM said, on whether to call the new organization the “Mozambican Gay and Lesbian Movement” or the less-in-your-face “Organization Against Sexual Discrimination.”

At the end of the two-day seminar, attendees called for school-based sex education, gay-inclusive material in libraries and bookstores and on television, and for dialogue with media editors and the journalists union.

Assistance: Bill Kelley