Gay relationships should be legalised as a measure to control the spread of HIV/Aids.

Chief Executive Officer of the South African based Human Sciences Research Council, Prof Olive Shisana, told an international conference on HIV/Aids that failure by Governments in Africa to legalise the relationships has adversely contributed to the spread of the disease.

She explained that those who practised the behaviour did it secretly since it was illegal thereby failing to observe preventive measures.

“Statistics have revealed that gay relationships stood in the way of efforts to check the spread of HIV/Aids,” Shisana said in a key address.

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>ST. PAUL The Minnesota Senate approved hospital visitation rights for domestic partners today. The move touched off debate over the definition of marriage.

The legislation would give unmarried domestic partners the standing to visit and make health care decisions for each other in the hospital. The bill defines domestic partners as adults in a “committed interdependent relationship” who live together.Gay marriage opponents painted the bill as a sneaky way of legalizing same-sex unions.Backers say the legislation is a humane effort to help same-sex partners who have hit barriers during health emergencies.An amendment that would have removed the term “domestic partners” from the bill failed.A House version awaits a vote.

Source: wkbt.com

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FOR a time, he was the world’s most enigmatic young man - a haunted, gaunt figure known only as “the Piano Man”. Now, nearly two years after the breakdown which landed him in a psychiatric clinic in Britain, the Piano Man has a name and a new purpose in life.

Andreas Grassl, 22, has escaped from the Bavarian village he hated, to being a face in the crowd of cosmopolitan Basel in Switzerland, it has emerged.

Here he is free to pursue the French literature he adores, and to live the gay lifestyle that was unthinkable amid the farmers’ sons he grew up with.

His friends say the catalyst for his strange journey to Britain, a spell in a psychiatric clinic and on the front pages of newspapers around the world, was a shattered gay love affair.

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ELIZABETH, N.J. - A judge handling the contentious divorce of the nation’s first openly gay governor and his estranged wife urged them on Friday to use “common sense” during their split.

Judge Karen Cassidy also called former Gov. James E. McGreevey’s sexual orientation insignificant to the case.

The courtroom session with McGreevey and Dina Matos McGreevey was their first public appearance together since he resigned and told the world he was “a gay American” more than two years ago.

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>New York Governor Eliot Spitzer (D) [official website] introduced a bill Friday to legalize gay marriage in New York. In a press release, Spitzer said

>Under current law, partners unable to enter into a civil marriage - and their children - lack legal protections taken for granted by married couples. In such areas as property ownership, inheritance, health care, hospital visitation, taxation, insurance coverage, child custody and pension benefits, married couples receive important safeguards against the loss or injury of a spouse, and crucial insurance against legal intrusion into marital privacy.

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>(London) The highest ranking out gay police officer in the world is reportedly ready to leave his job as Deputy Assistant Police Commissioner of London’s Metropolitan Police.

>Brian Paddick has confirmed he will leave the force in which he has served for more than 30 years at the end of the month.  He said he wants to begin writing a book on his career and to do public speaking.

>Paddick had become disenchanted with the way the force was being run following a disagreement with the way Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair had handled the shooting of an innocent man police had mistaken for a terror suspect at in 2005. 

>Paddick told a commission investigating the shooting that Blair’s own private officer believed, just hours after the shooting the wrong man had been killed. Still, Blair had maintained the man was a terrorist.

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BOSTON (AP) - Lawmakers and gay rights activists from Wisconsin - where voters approved a ban same-sex marriage last year - are urging their Massachusetts counterparts to avoid a statewide vote, with one saying it lets “mob rule” dictate on a question of discrimination.

The admonition comes on a video being unveiled this weekend at house parties across the state, and being sent to Massachusetts lawmakers considering a proposed constitutional amendment outlawing gay marriage.

Created by MassEquality, the DVD is the latest lobbying effort by gay rights groups who are trying to preserve their right to marriage, made possible by the historic 2003 court ruling allowing same-sex marriage in Massachusetts.

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MANKATO — Ten gay rights activists were cited for trespassing after walking onto the Bethany Lutheran College campus as security guards told them to stop.

The activists, who were later released, were among 50 members of the group Soulforce Equality Riders, which is on a national tour to promote gay rights at the nation’s conservative Christian universities and military academies.

Bethany Lutheran College is owned and operated by the conservative Evangelical Lutheran Synod.

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>Lawmakers in New Hampshire have approved same-sex civil unions, giving legal recognition to gay partnerships in the north-eastern US state. >The bill was passed by a 14-10 vote in the Democratic-held state senate.

>State Governor John Lynch would sign the bill into law within days, his spokesman said.

>Gay marriage is legal in only one of the 50 US states - Massachusetts. New Jersey, Connecticut and Vermont also offer some sort of civil unions.

>The bill in New Hampshire was passed without difficulty, unlike in other US states where the change in the law had faced legal challenges.

>Gov Lynch’s spokesman said the bill would be signed into law very soon.

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>(London) Gay rights campaigner Peter Tatchell is hoping to become the first Green Party Member of Parliament.

>Tatchell has won the party nomination to run in the riding of Oxford East, currently held by Labor’s Andrew Smith.

>Smith was elected by a slim majority and is considered vulnerable.

>Oxford is considered one of the most likely ridings to elect a Green candidate. Eleven members of the local council are party members.

>It is not Tatchell’s first foray into politics.  Twenty years ago he ran for the Labor Party in London and lost.

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