By Christopher Cappiello

Canadian census shows growth of same-sex marriage

The recently released 2006 Canadian census numbers are the first to capture figures for same-sex marriage, revealing almost 7,500 such unions. Activists were angered that the census forms relegated same-sex marriage to an “other” column, and pointed out that almost 12,500 marriage licenses have been granted to same-sex couples.

“One box for everybody,” said Helen Kennedy, executive director of Egale Canada, an LGBT rights group, to the Canadian Press. “People are people, and people just want the same things in life. Your sexual orientation should not matter.”

Kennedy’s organization was urging LGBT couples to check the “husband” or “wife” boxes, and it is unclear how that effort might have affected the final numbers.

Attorney Michael Leshner, who married his husband in one the country’s first legal gay marriages in 2003, pointed out that the numbers are probably understated from long-held fears of coming out.

“A lot of people do not feel comfortable, still, coming out on official government sites for a variety of reasons,” Leshner told the Globe and Mail newspaper. “Social change, even within the gay and lesbian movement, takes a long, long time.”

A total of 45,300 same-sex couples were reported, both married and common law, representing a 33 percent increase over the 2001 census. Heterosexual couples registered a 6 percent increase in the same period.

Male couples accounted for 54 percent of same-sex marriages, while lesbian couples were more likely to have children, with 16 percent of female couples raising kids compared to 3 percent of men.

In spite of any underreporting, same-sex couples accounted for 0.6 percent of all couples in Canada. Recent surveys in Australia, New Zealand and the United States reported similar ratios.

Hong Kong official ties rising HIV numbers to Internet

At a World Health Organization meeting in South Korea, Hong Kong’s director of health partly attributed a troubling rise in the number of HIV infections among gay men to Internet hookups.

“We have seen three clusters of HIV among men who have sex with men,” P.Y. Lam said, according to the Deutsche Presse Agentur news agency. “In this information age, they find new ways to meet each other and have relationships, sometimes on a very casual basis, while condom use is very low.”

Lam referred to clusters of cases, including one cluster in which more than 50 men were believed to have contracted HIV from the same source.

Hong Kong has seen approximately 3,000 total HIV infections, including around 900 cases of full-blown AIDS, according to DPA.

British sisters want same rights as lesbian couples

Two octogenarian sisters who have lived together all their lives are fighting to revise tax and inheritance laws in Great Britain, claiming that they should enjoy the same rights granted to same-sex couples.

In a rare case of heterosexual citizens seeking the same rights afforded to gays and lesbians, Joyce and Sybil Burden claim that British estate taxes will force the surviving sister to sell their home when the first dies. After their case was denied by a European Court of Human Rights last December, they have one final appeal before 17 Grand Chamber judges, the London Times reports.

The Burdens’ home, which they reportedly built for $14,000 in 1965, was valued in 2006 at nearly $1.8 million. Current British law would require the surviving sister to pay $475,000 in inheritance tax.

Married spouses are exempt from the estate tax. Since the passage of the 2004 Civil Partnership Act, same-sex couples who register their partnerships are also exempt.

When Parliament passed the partnership act, the House of Lords attempted to extend the bill’s benefits to unmarried family members over age 30 who had lived together for 12 years or more. That effort, aimed at protecting people like the Burden sisters, failed to pass.

London attorney Julian Washington told the Times that if the sisters prevail, it would require “a major revision to the U.K. tax system.”

“It would be unwise to underestimate Joyce and Sybil Burden,” Washington said. “It is impossible not to be impressed by their tenacity. These octogenarian spinster sisters argue that it is quite simply unfair that, when one of them dies, the survivor may have to sell their shared home to pay the inheritance tax.”

Iranian lesbian released from detention in U.K.

An Iranian lesbian who has been seeking asylum in Great Britain since fleeing her country in 2005 was released from detention after many months of uncertainty. Pegah Emambakhsh, 40, is reportedly safe from being returned to a country where the government could subject her to the death penalty.

“Pegah was granted bail this morning, is now out of Yarl’s Wood Detention Centre and back with people who will love and care for her,” a Sept. 12 statement from the Friends of Pegah Campaign read, according to blogger Michael Petrelis. “The Court of Appeal have also agreed to hear her case. It will be listed within the next couple of weeks and will be heard sometime in the next few months, we believe.”

Emambakhsh’s future is not certain, the statement read, “but she is now in a much more hopeful position.”

Two weeks earlier, the Italian government offered to grant asylum to Emambakhsh, essentially embarrassing British authorities into reopening her case.

An earlier U.K. hearing had rejected her claims that a return to Iran would mean imprisonment, torture or death.

The international outcry of support for Emambakhsh included public support from the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission.