A gay activist in Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada, was arrested Sept. 4 after he chained himself to a chair at the Service New Brunswick center because provincial officials wouldn’t let him change his name.

Art Vautour-Toole married his husband, Wayne Toole, in Ontario where same-sex marriage was legalized this summer, and later changed his name on his federal Social Insurance card. But the province has refused to alter his driver’s license and medicare card.

The protest caused service center officials to push a “panic” button, which led to the building being evacuated. Vautour-Toole was then taken into custody for creating a disturbance.

Courts in Ontario and British Columbia rewrote the definition of marriage this summer to include same-sex couples. The federal government is in the process of extending those rulings to cover the rest of the nation. Foreign gay couples can buy a license and get married in Ontario or British Columbia the same day.

The European Parliament has urged the 15 nations of the European Union to extend full marriage and adoption rights to same-sex couples. The Sept. 4 vote was 221 to 195 with 23 abstentions.

MEPs also said same-sex couples must be free to relocate together within the EU.

“These adopted paragraphs put new heart into all these millions of homosexuals and will help those people and organizations who have been fighting for equal rights for homosexuals in the future,” said Joke Swiebel, chair of the parliament’s Intergroup on Gay and Lesbian Rights.

The recommendations were adopted via acceptance of a twice-yearly human-rights report.

Lawyers for the national government told the Delhi High Court Sept. 8 that gay sex must remain banned in India because of societal disapproval.

“Indian society by and large disapproves of homosexuality and disapproval was strong enough to justify it being treated as a criminal offence even where the adults indulge in it in private,” they wrote.

The community-based AIDS organization Naz Foundation sued to overturn Penal Code Section 377, which punishes gay sex, lesbian sex and bestiality with up to life in prison. Naz says the law interferes with its HIV prevention efforts.

But the government argued, “Deletion of the said section can well open the flood gates of delinquent behaviour and be construed as providing unbridled license for the same.”

The government also charged that Naz had no standing to bring the lawsuit because it has not been prosecuted under Section 377. The court will consider the matter further on Dec. 10.

Imprisoned Uzbek gay journalist Ruslan Sharipov sent a letter begging for help to U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan Sept. 5.

Human rights activists say Sharipov was coerced into pleading guilty to charges of sodomy, sex with minors and running a brothel after authorities tortured him and threatened to harm his mother. The government targeted him to silence his journalistic criticism of human rights abuses and police corruption, activists claim. Sharipov received a five-and-one-half-year sentence in August.

In the letter to Annan, Sharipov wrote: “[B]efore I ‘confessed’ and ‘plead guilty’ at the trial ... I was forced to write a ‘death note,’ in which I wrote, as dictated, a goodbye letter and declared that I committed suicide of my own volition. I was clearly told that if I would write any further appeals or complaints, I would commit suicide, that is, I would ‘kill myself.’

“I was tortured and pressured in ways I cannot describe with the aim of forcing me to confess and plead guilty at trial for a crime that I hadn’t committed.... They put a gas mask on my head and sprayed an unknown substance into my throat, after which I could hardly breathe. They also injected an unknown substance into my veins and warned me that if I did not follow their instructions they would give me an injection of the AIDS virus. I could not withstand such excesses, and now I am writing only a small part of what I faced.… I was also afraid that they could do all this to my mother and younger brother, as well as to my lawyers.…

“Now I am afraid of my own shadow and the noise of the opening of the cell’s doors, because I am waiting the next round of torture at the hands of the officers of the Mirzo-Ulugbek District Department of Internal Affairs and other structures of the system.… Soon, I will be sent to a prison colony to serve my sentence, where [I have been told that] some people are already waiting for me and I will have to answer for the ‘damage’ caused to independent Uzbekistan.”

Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad denounced homosexuality during his National Day speech Aug. 31.

“Crimes like rape, incest and horrific murder are happening every day in our country when they previously did not,” he said. “This is because the culture of violence and sex is being spread via the television and videos from the West. There is a degradation of moral values due to pornographic videos, so much so that locals are also willing to act in pornographic films. Western films adulate sex, violence, murder and war. Homosexuality is allowed, even religious leaders are openly gay. They are incensed, especially their journalists, many of whom are gay, when the practice is punished under our laws.

“This degradation of morals and frenzy to fulfill all lusts will weaken our spirit to fight and bring ill to society,” Mahathir said. “Our ability to distinguish the good from the bad is diminishing. This, together with other things that disturb our thoughts, like the ideology of liberal democracy and human rights, means the colonization of our minds is complete.”