Canon Jeffrey John has lived with a partner for 27 years but claims they no longer have sex. That was too much for church conservatives in Britain and several developing nations who threatened that the Anglican Communion would split apart if John's appointment was allowed to stand.

In stepping down, John said his consecration would cause too much damage to church unity.

Anglican conservatives continue to reel over the selection of an openly gay bishop in the U.S. state of New Hampshire and over the bishop of Vancouver, Canada's recent decision to offer church gay-union ceremonies.

Less than an hour after the new ruling, Tom Graff and Anthony Porcino were married at Vancouver's B.C. Law Courts building by United Church minister Tim Stevenson, a gay member of the Vancouver City Council.

Both provinces' highest courts declared the federal government's opposite-sex definition of marriage unconstitutional. Following the Ontario ruling, the federal government announced its agreement with the decision and began the process of formally legalizing same-sex marriage nationwide.

In the meantime, hundreds of same-sex couples already have married in Ontario and now weddings are occurring in British Columbia as well. Neither province has a residency requirement for marriage. Foreign same-sex couples can buy a license and get married the same day.

The B.C. Court of Appeal initially struck down the federal marriage definition on May 1 but suspended its ruling until July 2004 to give legislators time to rework the marriage laws. Subsequently, Ontario's Court of Appeal struck down the same definition but did not include a grace period. In light of the Ontario ruling, the B.C. court decided to close the gap, thereby legalizing same-sex marriage in the province instantly.

The court stated: "Any further delay ... will result in an unequal application of the law as between Ontario and British Columbia, with same-sex couples being denied the right to marry in British Columbia until July 12, 2004, while same-sex couples in Ontario may marry as and when they choose to do so. [I]t is appropriate to ... lift the suspension of remedies, with the result that the declaratory relief and the reformulation of the common-law definition of marriage as 'the lawful union of two persons to the exclusion of all others' will take immediate effect."

For full details on how to get married in British Columbia, visit http://www.vs.gov.bc.ca/marriage/howto.html.

Goh said the policy change was inspired in part by a desire not to exclude talented gay foreigners from immigrating.

But the move is not being trumpeted in order to keep from alarming conservatives.

"Let it evolve, and in time the population will understand that some people are born that way," Goh said. "We are born this way and they are born that way, but they are like you and me."

Licensed brothels will operate under public-health and employment laws.

The author of the repeal legislation, gay MP Tim Barnett, called the prostitution ban "the last significant vestige of Victorian moral law [in] the New Zealand statute book."

More than half of the 354 New Zealanders arrested for prostitution in the past five years were men.

Police wearing riot gear protected the marchers from Neo-Nazis "who formed a marauding throng at the base of Erzsébet híd" bridge, said the Budapest Sun.

Mayor Gábor Demszky attended the pride launch event the previous evening at the Művész Cinema complex. He described Budapest as a beacon of tolerance and fraternity.

The march ended at Museum Plaza with speeches and artistic performances. The city government provided the stage and sound equipment.

Activists unveiled a new gay-pride flag that won a contest carried out in gay bars and on the Web. It combines the red, blue and yellow Venezuelan flag with the gay rainbow flag.

The measure will take effect in one year.

According to the Japan Times, the law permits people to change their registration if they have been diagnosed by two doctors as having a different psychological makeup from their biological sex and a desire to live as the opposite gender physically and socially. Applicants must be single and childless and no longer have functioning reproductive organs due to sex-change surgery.

The documentation change will eliminate problems that transsexuals face in such matters as voting and filling out job applications, the Times said.

The House of Commons had voted to overturn the law in March.

Enacted by the Tory government in 1988, the section stated: "A local authority shall not (a) intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality; (b) promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship."

The section was repealed locally in Scotland three years ago.

"Apart from my husband -- who maybe will cross over one day as well -- I am entirely surrounded by homos," Bardot told the French gay magazine Tribumove July 11. "Homosexuals are for me human beings like any other with their qualities and their faults. I count some of them as my best friends."

Bardot angered some gays with a passage in her new book, A Cry In The Silence. It said, "They jiggle their bottoms, put their little fingers in the air and with their little castrato voices moan about what those ghastly heteros put them through."