Sixty-one percent of Mexicans “oppose a constitutional amendment that would permit same-sex marriage,” a new Parametría poll has found. Seventeen percent support the idea and 14 percent lack an opinion.

Forty-one percent “oppose a law that would allow same-sex partners to legally register and obtain some benefits and rights.” Twenty-eight percent support a civil-union law and 28 percent have no opinion.

Pollsters questioned 1,200 adults. The margin of error was 2.8 percent.

The Mexico City Legislative Assembly passed a local civil-union law for same-sex couples Nov. 9. The vote was 43-17 with 5 abstentions. The statute, which will take effect by March, grants spousal rights in areas such as property, pensions, inheritance, medical decisions and co-parenting.

Heterosexual couples and nonsexual couples also can register under the law.

Spanish Justice Minister Juan Fernando López Aguilar has proposed that gays who were jailed, tortured or sent to mental hospitals during the 1939-1975 rule of dictator Francisco Franco be compensated with a one-time payment of $15,777 and a monthly pension of $1,052, Britain’s The Independent reported Dec. 28.

Many Franco-era gays receive only a small retirement pension because the regime branded them as criminals and prevented them from working, leaving them unable to pay into the system.

Incarcerated gays were often “treated” with electric shocks and forced to watch straight pornography. Lower-class gays without “connections” were particularly vulnerable to institutionalization. The abuse didn’t stop until the late 1970s and the men’s criminal records were not purged until 2001.

Nowadays, Spain is one of the world’s gay-friendliest nations. Full same-sex marriage was legalized in 2005.

Twenty-one Episcopal churches around the U.S. have disaffiliated from the Episcopal Church USA, part of the worldwide Anglican Communion, and linked up instead with the powerful, anti-gay Anglican Primate of Nigeria, Archbishop Peter Akinola.

The U.S. parishes, now members of Akinola’s ultraconservative Convocation of Anglicans in North America, oppose the Episcopal Church’s consecration of openly gay New Hampshire Bishop Gene Robinson and its support for blessing same-sex relationships.

Akinola’s growing power – Nigeria has more Anglicans than any other nation except England – is seen as a possible threat to the supremacy of the Anglican Communion’s traditional spiritual leader, the Archbishop of Canterbury in England.

In a recent interview with The New York Times, Akinola asked: “Why didn’t God make a lion to be a man’s companion? Why didn’t he make a tree to be a man’s companion? Or better still, why didn’t he make another man to be man’s companion? So even from the creation story, you can see that the mind of God, God’s intention, is for man and woman to be together.”

He also said that the only time he knowingly shook hands with an openly gay man, he was horrified and “jumped back” as soon as the man came out to him.

Akinola supports draconian anti-gay legislation that is expected to pass Nigeria’s National Assembly this year. The measure seemingly could outlaw such things as belonging to a gay group, reading a gay book, watching a gay movie, visiting a gay Internet site, and socializing by two or more gay people. The bill also bans same-sex marriage. Violating the proposed law would result in up to five years in prison.

Gay sex already is illegal in Nigeria. It is punished with death in Muslim areas of the nation and with jail time in Christian sections.

Akinola denies he has violated Anglican rules prohibiting bishops from controlling parishes outside a bishop’s territory. He says the convocation was formed to serve theologically conservative Nigerian Anglicans living in the U.S. and that it then began attracting conservative American Episcopalians.

The Anglican Communion is a confederation of national churches that have a total of 77 million members, more than 15 million of them in Nigeria.

The Wyre Borough Council in northwest England and the Lancashire Constabulary, the county police force, have paid $19,500 plus costs to settle a lawsuit filed by an anti-gay Christian couple.

Joe and Helen Roberts had asked the council to display Christian pamphlets alongside its gay-rights literature. After the council refused, Mrs. Roberts phoned bureaucrats and called homosexuality “morally wrong.”

The council reported the call to the police who then went to the couple’s home in Fleetwood and interrogated them for 80 minutes.

The Robertses filed suit, claiming their rights to religious belief and freedom of expression had been trampled.

The council and the police eventually agreed and, in late December, apologized for the incident and settled with the couple in advance of a High Court hearing.

“Mexico’s Madonna,” flamboyant gay icon Gloria Trevi, has made a full comeback with her public, including hordes of gay fans, since being released from prison in late 2004.

Her rebound single, “Everybody’s Watching Me,” hit No. 1 in Mexico. It chronicles a gay man’s emergence from the closet. The album, How the Universe Was Born, went platinum in the United States.

In 2000, Trevi, her manager and a backup singer were arrested in Brazil on charges of sexually molesting young girls they allegedly enticed into their inner circle by dangling promises of stardom.

Following extradition to Mexico and nearly five years behind bars, Trevi, 38, was acquitted of rape, kidnapping and corrupting minors.

Assistance: Bill Kelley