Cayman Islands bans same-sex marriage
The Caribbean's Cayman Islands banned gay marriage Sept. 5.
Lawmakers voted for the measure unanimously.
The bill amended the Marriage Law to define 'marriage' as 'the union between a man and a woman as husband and wife.'
Leader of Government Business Kurt Tibbetts told local media the traditional definition of marriage is an aspect of the islands' heritage and culture that Caymanians have no interest in changing.
ACT UP/Paris protests pope's visit
ACT UP/Paris demonstrated at Paris' famous Sacré-Coeur church Sept. 13 as Pope Benedict XVI staged a mass for more than a quarter of a million people on the Esplanade des Invalides.
The protesters erected a large banner at the top of the church's stairs which read, 'The condom is life,' and laid a 150-foot ( 45-meter ) black-and-pink carpet down the stairs 'to denounce the obscenity of the red carpet deployed in Paris by ( President ) Nicolas Sarkozy for Benedict XVI and his reactionary theses.'
In a French-language statement, ACT UP said: 'The chief of the Vatican has affirmed ... that 'only marriage can permit a morally correct sexual practice; to seek to prevent the spread of AIDS by use of a condom amounts to facilitation of evil.''
'The lethal positions of the Catholic Church on condom use implicate it in the deaths of millions of men, women and children,' the group said. 'Indeed, the AIDS epidemic already has killed more than 40 million, and UNAIDS estimates that a quarter of the HIV-positive people on the planet are Catholic.'
Beijing reports HIV stats
Five percent of gay men in Beijing are HIV-positive and too many gay men are having unsafe sex, the Beijing Center for Disease Control and Prevention said Sept. 5.
Local gays use condoms less than 50 percent of the time they have sex, said deputy director He Xiong.
At the same time, infection rates have dropped from needle sharing, blood products and mother-to-child transmission, He said.
The department recently tested 1 million people and found 563 infections.
Officially, China has 214,000 HIV cases but the real number is believed to be around 650,000, according to the Ministry of Health and international health organizations.
Church to separate bodies of Cardinal Newman and partner
In preparation for making him a saint, the Roman Catholic Church will dig up the body of influential 19th-century English Cardinal John Henry Newman and move it to a church in Birmingham.
The move will separate Newman's body from that of fellow priest Ambrose St. John, with whom Newman lived for three decades and beside whom he demanded, in his will, that he be buried. The men's graves share a headstone.
Newman's will said: 'I wish, with all my heart, to be buried in Father Ambrose St. John's grave—and I give this as my last, my imperative will.'
Some British gay activists have suggested the decision is based on a desire to obscure evidence of Newman's alleged homosexuality prior to canonization.
Gay leader Peter Tatchell called the exhumation 'an act of grave robbery and religious desecration.'
'It violates Newman's repeated wish to be buried for eternity with his lifelong partner,' Tatchell told The Independent. 'They have been together for more than 100 years and the Vatican wants to disturb that peace to cover up the fact that Cardinal Newman loved a man. It's a shameful, dishonorable betrayal of Newman by the gay-hating Catholic Church.'
When St. John died, Newman wrote, 'I have ever thought no bereavement was equal to that of a husband's or a wife's, but I feel it difficult to believe that any can be greater, or anyone's sorrow greater, than mine.'
Church officials claim that Newman was not gay and that saints' graves must be easily accessible to the faithful.
They have accused Tatchell and others of mistakenly superimposing today's categories onto Victorian times when intense and passionate but celibate same-sex relationships apparently were common among Anglo-Catholics.
Brits win gay soccer championship
The English gay soccer team Stonewall Lions defeated Argentina to capture the Gay World Football Championship trophy Aug. 30 in London.
The tournament, organized by the International Gay and Lesbian Football Association, drew 40 teams from Argentina, Australia, Canada, the Czech Republic, Denmark, England, Iceland, Ireland, Japan, Mexico, Scotland, South Africa, Sweden and the United States.
Leading British gay activist Peter Tatchell said gay soccer 'challenges the machismo and homophobia that is often associated with football.'
'Gay footballers help break down stereotypes and prejudice,' he said. 'They are ambassadors for gay inclusion and equality.'
The English team Leicester Wildecats FC won the World Second Division title. And Hackney Women's FC won the World Women's League competition.
'It is an amazing achievement that England has won all three titles,' said tournament chair Mikey Collins, 'We've firmly established our country as the No. 1 gay football nation in the world.'
Alarm over South African gay ruling
South Africa's Christian Democratic Party and the Apostolic Faith Mission Church have expressed alarm over a recent Pretoria High Court decision that fined a church for firing a music teacher because he was in a gay relationship, the South African Press Association reported.
The bodies said churches should be allowed to hire and fire teachers based on religious tenets.
They said that while the constitution prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation, it also protects freedom of association and religion—and that the former should not trump the latter guarantees.
Apostolic Faith President Dr. Isak Burger said Christian values should not be subject to 'an extremely secular and liberal constitution' because the constitution should not be 'above the Bible and ... God.'
The court determined the church, Nederduits Gereformeerde Kerk in Moreleta Park, had discriminated against Johan Strydom and must apologize to him and pay him $11,200.
—Assistance: Bill Kelley