Canada’s Supreme Court ruled March 1 that the federal government violated the Constitution when it limited same-sex couples’ eligibility for retroactive Canada Pension Plan benefits to people whose partners died after 1997.

The government established that cutoff in 2000 when Parliament granted same-sex couples full pension rights.

The Supreme Court, however, did not order payment of retroactive benefits all the way back to 1985, when equality rights took effect under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. That would have cost the government around $100 million paid to some 1,500 claimants in the huge class-action suit.

Instead, the court ordered payment of one year’s back pension as compensation to people whose partners died between 1985 and 1997. The individuals also will receive a pension of around $500 a month from now on.

“Achieving an appropriate balance between fairness to individual litigants and respecting the legislative role of Parliament may mean that Charter remedies will be directed more toward government action in the future and less toward the correction of past wrongs,” the court explained.

If Europe doesn’t ban abortion and limit gay propaganda, Muslims will take over, Polish Deputy Prime Minister Roman Giertych said March 2.

“Abortion must be banned immediately,” Giertych said. “Homosexual propaganda must also be limited so children will have the correct view of the family.

“The propaganda of homosexuality is reaching ever younger children,” he explained. “In some countries it is even forbidden for children in hospital to talk or read about Mommy and Daddy because this allegedly violates minority rights. Let’s free ourselves of this unwise political correctness. If we will not use all our power to strengthen the family, then as a continent there is no future for us. We will be a continent settled by representatives of the Islamic world who care for the family.”

Other officials in Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski’s ruling coalition also have denounced gays – and local officials routinely attempt to ban Pride parades.

Kaczynski has called gays “perverse” and his twin brother, President Lech Kaczynski, shocked attendees at a National Forum On Europe meeting in Ireland on Feb. 20 when he warned that if homosexuality “were to be promoted on a grand scale, the human race would disappear. Imagine what grand changes would occur in mores if the traditional links between men and women were set aside.”

President Kaczynski banned the Pride parade in 2004 and 2005 when he was mayor of Warsaw, and said he’d do it again if he were mayor today.

“I don’t think it’s appropriate that they should promote their sexual orientation,” he said at the Irish meeting.

Mexican pop-music star Christián Chávez of the group RBD came out on the band’s Web site March 2 after photos of his 2005 same-sex marriage in Canada were published by the Web site latingossip.com.

“I don’t want to keep on lying and lie to myself because of fear,” Chávez said. “[The photos] show a part of me, a part that I was not prepared to speak of in fear of rejection, of criticism, but especially for my family and its consequences.”

“I think it’s time to grow up, not only as a human being, but also as an artist,” he wrote. “I believe love is the purest feeling that exists and in this career filled with loneliness, having the opportunity to share those moments with someone, that when you look into their eyes, you forget all the negative things, it’s a gift of life, that I cherish more than fame.”

“I don’t think this is a defect, I won’t deny it,” Chávez said. “Although I’m scared and filled with uncertainty I know that I can rely on the support of my fans, their love is bigger than all of this. I ask them from the bottom of my heart, not to judge me for being honest and to feel proud of who they are and never make the same mistake I did.”

RBD is popular throughout much of Latin America and among Latinos in the United States

Umut Güner, editor of Turkey’s only gay magazine, KAOS GL, was acquitted Feb. 28 of obscenity charges stemming from the summer 2006 issue.

The issue looked at pornography from a mostly academic perspective via articles by several well-known writers.

A judge said that although the magazine should have been placed in an opaque package, no crime had taken place since the authorities confiscated all copies of the magazine before it was distributed.

Güner faced up to three years in prison if found guilty.

Spain’s Parliament passed a law March 1 allowing transsexuals to change the sex on their birth certificates and other documents even if they haven’t had a sex-change operation.

Such individuals will be required to present medical proof of “gender dysphoria” and of at least two years of medical treatment to harmonize their physical characteristics with their gender identity, unless age or health prevents the treatment.

Reports said only about a third of Spain’s estimated 8,000 transsexuals have undergone full sex-reassignment surgery.

Those who have not reportedly experience discrimination and other problems when employers and others note the discrepancy between their appearance and the sex on their identity documents.

Australian radio personality John Laws was exercising his right to free speech when he called Carson Kressley of “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” a “pillow biter” and “pompous little pansy prig” during a 2004 broadcast, the New South Wales Administrative Decisions Tribunal ruled March 1.

In a 2-1 decision, the tribunal dismissed a complaint filed by gay activist Gary Burns.

The judges agreed that the remarks “constituted homosexual vilification” and “incited severe ridicule of homosexual men on the ground of their homosexuality” but two of the judges determined the statements “fell within an exception established by the [Anti-Discrimination] Act that is designed, within appropriate limits, to preserve freedom of expression.”

Assistance: Bill Kelley