Jose Maria Di Bello and his partner Alex Freyre won the right to get married when a judge ruled last week that a ban on gay marriage violates Argentina’s constitution.

“On December 1st we will become man and man,” said Di Bello, welling up in tears as a city clerk gave him the paperwork.

Buenos Aires Mayor Mauricio Macri said the city will not appeal – in effect inviting other same-sex couples to pursue their rights in court as well.

“We have to live with and accept this reality: the world is moving in this direction,” Macri said Friday, adding that it is important officials “safeguard the right of each person to freely choose with whom they want to form a couple and be happy.”

Freyre, 39, executive director of the Buenos Aires AIDS Foundation, and Di Bello, 41, an executive with the Argentine Red Cross, sued after being denied a license in April.

Their request was granted by Judge Gabriela Seijas, who said laws limiting marriage to “a man and a woman” violate constitutional rights of equality.

Argentina’s Congress is considering changing dozens of articles in the civil code to enable same-sex marriage. The proposal has support among ruling party lawmakers but President Cristina Fernandez has yet to take a stand. The Roman Catholic Church and other Christian groups are opposed.

Currently no country in Latin America allows gay marriage, though some jurisdictions allow gay partners to form civil unions with many of the same rights.

Seijas’ ruling sets no precedent beyond this case, but other gays and lesbians can cite it and hope for positive results in court if their requests for marriage licenses are denied.

“Ideally we want the bill to pass so that couples won’t have to resort to this type of action,” said Maria Rachid, president of the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transsexual Federation of Argentina.

Buenos Aires in 2002 became the first city in Latin America to allow same-sex civil unions, and Mexico City followed in 2007. Uruguay has legalized civil unions nationwide. In the Spanish-speaking world, Spain went further, legalizing same-sex marriage in 2005.

The men – both HIV positive – plan to marry on World AIDS Day at the same civil registry in the capital’s Palermo neighborhood. They told The Associated Press that marriage – and not just a civil union – is important to them because they want a shared health insurance policy and inheritance rights, among other things married couples now enjoy.

The findings came in a report by an 18-member panel of independent experts who urged the Kremlin to implement a number of legal reforms. They include narrowing the broad definitions of terrorism and extremism under Russian law, decriminalizing defamation cases against journalists and granting appeal rights to people forced into psychiatric hospitals by the courts.

The expert panel said it also was concerned about violence against lesbian, gay and bisexual persons, including reports of police harassment. It said it received reports of people being assaulted or even killed because they were gay or lesbian. The panel said it was concerned at the “systematic discrimination against individuals on the basis of their sexual orientation” in Russia.

Homosexuality was decriminalized in Russia in the 1990s, but many Russians are vehemently opposed to expansion of gay rights or gay-rights demonstrations. Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov is an outspoken foe of gay rights and always has blocked attempts to hold gay pride marches in the capital, calling one a satanic gathering.

The U.N. panel – which this week assessed the compliance of Russia and four other countries with the U.N.’s 1966 international treaty on civil and political rights – receives its information from various U.N. agencies, non-governmental organizations and cases at the European Court of Human Rights.

Gay and lesbian activists think so – and they have a growing number of supporters in Congress, which opened debate Thursday on whether to change dozens of laws that define marriage as a union between a “man and woman.”

“We can’t expect social equality if the state is legitimizing inequality,” said Maria Rachid, president of Argentina’s Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Federation. “We now have the social and political context necessary to change the law.”

It remains to be seen whether they have enough votes to overcome opposition from religious groups. The Roman Catholic Church remains a driving force in Argentina, where presidents were required to be both married and Catholic until a 1994 reform.

Some Catholic and evangelical Christian groups have accused the government of trying to subvert the natural order of life, promote perversions and destroy the family as an institution.

“This should not be understood as the denial of anyone’s rights,” said Archbishop Jose Maria Arancedo of Santa Fe, who took a gentler tone in a recent radio address. “It’s possible both to be progressive and to defend the family, founded on the institution of marriage.”

Argentina’s capital established its gay-friendly reputation in 2002 by becoming the first Latin American city to legalize same-sex civil unions. Four other Argentine cities later did the same, and such unions also now are recognized in Mexico City and some Mexican and Brazilian states. Uruguay alone has legalized civil unions nationwide.

Canada is the only nation in the Americas where gay marriage is now legal; in the Spanish-speaking world, only Spain has taken this additional step.

The capital’s civil unions law was initially celebrated as a huge victory for gay and lesbian rights, but such partnerships don’t confer many rights exclusive to married couples, such as the right to adopt children in the name of both parents, to enable a partner to gain citizenship and to inherit wealth or be included in insurance policies.

“A civil union is a link that grants certain rights, but not those available to a married couple, which only a national law can grant,” the bills’ co-sponsor, Rep. Vilma Ibarra, told The Associated Press. “This is the first round in a long process, but it is already a success to have it out there.”

Rachid said more than 20 lawmakers have signed on as supporters of same-sex marriage, and they believe they have enough votes in committee for a full vote in the lower house. It would then go to the Senate.

Rachid and her partner, Claudia Castro, were among the first same-sex couples in Buenos Aires to form a civil union – and the first to test Argentine law by applying for a marriage license in 2007. Their suit over the denial is pending at the Supreme Court.

“The opinion of religious leaders who dictate how other people should lead their lives should apply only to those who share their creed, and not to the rest of society,” Rachid said during an interview with Castro in the Buenos Aires apartment they share with their dog, Lola.

“We don’t need a law to define us as a couple – we’ve already been a couple for more than 10 years,” Castro added. “We just want to have equal rights.”

If the law passes, they plan to be first in line for a marriage license.

Then one morning, Cunningham picked up a local newspaper with a front-page story under the headline, “Homosexual Prostitutes Move into Residential Neighborhood.” His address was listed below.

For days afterward, Cunningham said an angry mob gathered on his lawn hurling rocks and bricks and calling them “batty boys” – a Jamaican slang term for gay. Eventually, the pair grabbed what they could and fled on foot. Cunningham said neither he nor his boyfriend were prostitutes – the slur was just another example of the abuse gay men faced in Jamaica.

The story was one of many that Cunningham, now 32 and living in Worcester, recently shared with a federal immigration judge in his successful bid to win asylum in the United States. And it’s similar to other stories cited by a small but growing number of other gay, lesbian and transgender asylum seekers who are using U.S. immigration courts to argue that their sexual orientation makes it too dangerous for them to return home.

“I had no choice,” said Andre Azevedo, 39, a transgender man from Brazil who recently won asylum and now lives in New York. “Where I’m from, heterosexual men practice hate crimes against us like a sport, and the police do nothing to stop it.”

Since 1994, sexual orientation has been grounds for asylum in the United States. That’s when former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno ruled in a case that persecution based on sexual orientation could be potential grounds for asylum.

Until recently, those grounds have been rarely used and such cases represent only a fraction of all asylum cases.

But now immigrant and gay activists say more asylum seekers from the Middle East, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean are citing sexual orientation as reasons for seeking asylum. Activists say the asylum seekers are escaping rape, persecution, violence, and threats of death from places where homosexuality is either outlawed or strongly, socially shunned.

Federal immigration law allows individuals asylum if they can prove a well-founded fear of persecution in their country of origin based upon race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group. Those applying for asylum are already in the United States, legally or illegally.

No one knows for sure just how many have sought asylum on sexual orientation grounds. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services doesn’t keep data on asylum cases won on that basis.

Still, last year Immigration Equality, a New York-based nonprofit group that helps gay clients with immigration cases, successfully won 55 asylum cases using sexual orientation as grounds, a record for the organization, said the group’s legal director Victoria Neilson. That’s up from 30 wins in 2007 and 27 in 2006, Neilson said.

And a Worcester, Mass.-based nonprofit group, Lutheran Social Services, has recently won five cases and is looking to help others.

“I think more people are finding out that this is an option,” said Lisa Laurel Weinberg, an attorney with the group.

However, not all cases for asylum based on sexual orientation have been successful. For example, a gay Brazilian man who was married in Massachusetts and whose American husband remains in the state was recently denied asylum by the Obama administration on humanitarian grounds, despite pleas from Sen. John Kerry. Genesio “Junior” Januario Oliveira had originally requested asylum because he was raped as a teenager, but an immigration judge denied the application, saying Oliveira repeatedly said in the hearing that he “was never physically harmed” by anyone in Brazil.

He was forced to return to Brazil in 2007.

Cunningham said he decided to file for asylum after working for a few years in the United States on a work visa. He conducted research online but couldn’t find an immigration group to help him with the case. “One group said my case clashed with their Christian values,” Cunningham said.

Many gay rights groups, he said, also had limited services for immigrants.

It wasn’t until Cunningham connected with Jozefina Lantz, the director of immigrant services at Lutheran Social Services, that Cunningham gained support.

To win, however, Cunningham had to revisit painful moments of running from mobs in Jamaica. Even the police would point him out for persecution, he said. In successfully arguing Cunningham’s case for asylum, Weinberg also said Jamaica’s sodomy laws banning sex between men and “dancehall” music – whose lyrics often advocate violence against gays – made life for Cunningham unbearable.

Cunningham won asylum in January 2008.

During his asylum hearing, Azevedo had to recall violent episodes in Brazil when he and a group of transsexuals were attacked in bars. He recalled a transgender woman set on fire. Each time Azevedo said he went to police about an attack or a threat, the officers didn’t even bother to file a report.

“I had such a horrific experience,” said Azevedo, who was granted asylum in July. “I was always in fear of being raped, maybe even killed.”

After winning their cases, both Cunningham and Azevedo have become advocates for other asylum-seekers by giving them counseling and directing them toward legal help.

In Worcester, for example, Cunningham has helped a Lebanese and three others Jamaicans win asylum with the legal help provided by the Lutheran Social Services’ “LGBT Human Rights Protection Project.” Another case, involving an Ugandan woman, is pending in the courts.

But while those who have been granted asylum are eager to help, Azevedo said many still haven’t resolved the pain from the past and can’t go back home to visit family – those who haven’t disowned them.

Cunningham said he hasn’t gotten over the fear that, at any moment, he may be forced to flee.

“I’ve never really owned furniture,” Cunningham said. “You just never know.”

But Elie Wakim and Nada Ghamloush from Lebanon, and Dimitri Stafeev and Olga Zaytseva from Israel, had a problem in common: Belonging to different religions, neither couple could get married in their home country, and had to fly to the Mediterranean island of Cyprus to tie the knot.

In the Middle East, civil marriage doesn’t exist and no religious authority will perform an interfaith wedding. Lebanon and Israel are different in that they recognize civil marriages as long as they’re performed abroad, and the closest venue abroad is Cyprus, 150 miles from Lebanon and 230 miles from Israel.

So this little island, which claims to be the birthplace of Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love, has made mixed marriages something of an industry. Its municipalities charge around $415 for express processing and $190 for others, while travel agencies in both Lebanon and Israel offer packages including travel, luxury hotel, marriage fees and flowers for the bride.

Last year, by Cyprus government count, 523 couples from Lebanon and 1,533 from Israel were married here.

Wakim, 39, and Ghamloush, 33, met at work, fell in love and decided to marry. Their problem was, he’s a Maronite Christian, she’s a Baha’i. So Cyprus was their best bet.

Their wedding at City Hall in Nicosia, the capital, was quick and unadorned. A photocopier next to the Wedding Room whirred and creaked as municipal workers handled paperwork. The groom slipped outside for a quick smoke in the parking lot.

Then the marriage officer arrived, recited his lines in English, and the couple exchanged vows. It was over in 10 minutes.

They snapped a few photos of themselves on the steps of City Hall, then hurried off to finish the paperwork. They were catching a 40-minute flight back to Beirut that evening.

Many other couples stay on to honeymoon on the island, a sunny, laid-back escape from their high-stress lives back home at the center of the Mideast conflict. One such couple is Dimitri Stafeev and Olga Zaytseva, two 29-year-olds of Russian descent who live in a town near Jerusalem.

He’s Jewish, she’s a Russian Orthodox Christian, so they couldn’t marry in Israel unless one of them converted to the other’s faith. Converting to Judaism is a long process of study and ritual, and can be especially difficult for immigrants from the former Soviet Union who may have grown up with no religious education.

Stafeev and Zaytseva were married this month near the seaside city of Larnaca, in a century-old mansion renovated by the municipality with carpets and antique furniture to serve as a suitably romantic backdrop.

In Israel, the Orthodox rabbis who control marriage and divorce argue that their strict definition of Jewishness – it passes only through the mother – is vital to preserve the unity of a long-persecuted people, and to spare the offspring of mixed marriages from inheriting similar problems when their time comes to marry.

Clerics are just as firm in Lebanon, whose Muslim and Christian populations subdivide into 18 officially recognized religious groups.

“For us, a person who has civil marriage is like a person who is committing adultery,” Father Joseph Abdul-Sater, a Maronite Catholic priest and religious judge, told The Associated Press. “The marriage is the sacrament while civil marriage is a contract, and for that reason it is considered cohabitation.”

Mohammed Dali Balta, a Sunni Muslim judge, said in an interview that if human beings are allowed to write marriage laws, rather than live by religiously sanctified Muslim law, “they can one day legalize marriage between homosexuals.”

The Israeli and Lebanese couples who marry in Cyprus tend to feel bitter and discriminated against, and while they may consider each other enemies, they would probably find much to agree on as far as marriage law is concerned.

“Who is ruling the country? In a way, it’s the religious parties,” said Wakim, 39, the Lebanese groom. “Not separating the church from government from the beginning… this is the biggest problem.”

Ghamloush, his 33-year-old bride, said Lebanon, with so many religious groups, badly needs civil marriage. “Because if you respect your partner, you shouldn’t expect him to change his religion for you.”

Stafeev, who works in construction in Israel, said people’s religion should be their own affair. “Israel is a democratic state,” he said. “Everyone should have the will and the right to do what they want.”

Both Lebanon and Israel have champions for change.

Last year a campaign called “All for Civil Marriage in Lebanon” spread through Facebook and became a movement that is trying to legalize civil marriage for those who have no other option, said Basil Abdullah, a Lebanese civil rights activist.

Political rivalries have stymied the effort, he said, but he was optimistic it would eventually succeed.

In Israel, the marriage issue is a political line in the sand that can threaten governments dependent on religious parties for their parliamentary majorities.

Mixed couples in common-law marriages have won some relief from a 2002 Supreme Court ruling granting them the same rights and benefits as those in religiously sanctioned unions, but they still aren’t recognized by the state as married unless they go abroad and have a civil marriage.

Irit Rosenblum, a civil rights lawyer who campaigns for civil marriage, says for many couples, equal benefits aren’t enough; to be registered by the state as married “is really important mentally for them.”

The figures represented a major increase in rolling out drugs to patients across Africa, where the AIDS epidemic is focused, even though they were based on incomplete data and modeling.

They were released in an annual AIDS report jointly published by the World Health Organization, UNICEF and the U.N. AIDS program.

“Even though some of the data are not fully clear and there are some unanswered questions, this is a dramatic improvement,” said Daniel Halperin, an AIDS expert at Harvard University. “It shows that all this money that has gone to treatment has made some difference.”

In 2008, officials estimated more than 4 million people were on AIDS drugs in low- and middle-income countries. The biggest increase was in sub-Saharan Africa, where nearly 3 million people are now on the drugs.

Overall, about 44 percent of people with HIV in sub-Saharan Africa who need AIDS drugs are now taking them. In the U.S., about 71 percent of patients in need got AIDS drugs, according to 2003 data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“We have invested a lot of funds into HIV/AIDS, but it has been a worthwhile investment because we have saved lives,” said Dr. Teguest Guerma, WHO’s acting AIDS director.

The authors admitted “there remain uncertainties related to the quality of data reported.” Of the U.N.’s 192 member countries, 158 provided government-approved data, most of which was not independently verified.

Last year, the world spent nearly $9 billion on AIDS. For every dollar spent on public health, AIDS gets about 23 cents. It causes about 4 percent of deaths globally.

Guerma said the number of people who need AIDS drugs might double by the end of the year because WHO is considering revising its treatment guidelines. Several studies have suggested that AIDS patients could live longer if they started taking drugs sooner.

Now that millions of AIDS patients are on treatment, some experts said it was time for the U.N. to focus on other strategies for stopping the outbreak.

“We really need to do something about preventing HIV because there are more people getting infected every year than there are being put on treatment,” said David Ross, an AIDS expert at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

At a press conference in Johannesburg, Dr. Nono Simelela, head of South Africa’s National AIDS Council, said it had asked the country’s health department to draw up policies on circumcision. Studies have shown that circumcised men can reduce their chances of catching HIV by up to 60 percent.

South Africa has the world’s largest number of HIV cases, about 5.5 million people. About 700,000 South Africans are on AIDS drugs, Simelela said.

She also called for other prevention strategies, like addressing the stigma around AIDS and encouraging an open, fact-based discussion of sex.

“That’s where we are missing the mark,” Simelela said. “The social, moral regeneration must come to the fore.”

Experts warned it would be challenging to continue financing AIDS programs, given the global financial crisis. And since patients must take AIDS drugs for the rest of their lives, the cost of treatment programs will continue to increase, particularly when drug resistance develops and more expensive drugs are needed.

“The fact that WHO has come closer to meeting its target of universal AIDS treatment is certainly a good public relations coup,” said Philip Stevens, a director at International Policy Network, a London-based think tank. “Whether or not this is sustainable as billions more dollars are needed in the future is an entirely different question.”

“Bruno” – following Baron Cohen’s hit “Borat” – is centered around the adventures of a flamboyant gay fashion journalist from Austria. An official from Malaysia’s Film Censorship Board said the movie was considered unacceptable because of its story line, offensive language, jokes and racy nature. She declined to be named, citing protocol.

“It’s banned because the story is based on gay life … There are a lot of sex scenes,” she said. “It’s contrary to our culture.”

Gay sex, or “carnal intercourse against the order of nature,” is punishable by up to 20 years in jail and whipping in Malaysia. Sex toys, politically incorrect comments and jokes about religion also irked the censors, she said.

She said censors vetted the movie last month, and the distributor was notified. Ukraine has also banned the film, and some Austrian officials have spoken out against it, but have not taken action. Baron Cohen’s previous movie “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan” made fun of the former Soviet republic of Kazakhstan and the United States and was banned in Kazakhstan and Russia.

Malaysia also decided in early September to ban another American hit, the horror film “Halloween II,” because of its gory scenes and excessive violence, the official said. The distributor was informed and can appeal the decision.

A Muslim-majority nation of 28 million people, Malaysia has strict public morality rules, including those applying to entertainment. U.S. R&B star Beyonce Knowles, who is scheduled to perform here on Oct. 25, has promised to wear conservative attire for the show.

The ringing endorsement for the 47-year-old Westerwelle, who is widely expected to be tapped for the high-profile post of foreign minister in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s new government, in the Bild daily also highlighted his personal life in a way he rarely has.

“His man makes him so strong,” Bild wrote about Westerwelle, declaring that his 42-year-old partner Michael Mronz was not only his most important adviser during the campaign, but also “gives him security and … supports him when he suffers a setback.”

Despite eight years as leader of the pro-business Free Democrats, Westerwelle’s homosexuality has generated relatively little discussion. But with his party set to become kingmaker to Chancellor Merkel’s conservatives and him foreign minister, it has been thrust into the spotlight.

On Monday, a local official had to apologize for an anti-gay remark he made about Westerwelle on election night. Peter Langner, the city treasurer of the western city of Duisburg and a Social Democrat, had said that “I don’t want a gay foreign minister.”

Germans have been generally tolerant of openly gay politicians and others have paved the way, including Berlin Mayor Klaus Wowereit, who already declared back in 2001 that “I’m gay, and it’s good that way.”

While Westerwelle’s certainly no gay activist, he has said before that his lifestyle may be “encouraging for some young gays.”

“I can only tell all young gays and lesbians to not be disheartened, if not everything goes their way,” Westerwelle told the Berlin’s gay magazine Siegessaeule this month. “This society is changing for the good in the direction of tolerance and respect … though slower than I would wish.”

Westerwelle has been known to be gay since 2004, when he brought his partner to Merkel’s 50th birthday party.

“I’ve never been hiding my life,” Westerwelle said back then. “I just lived it.”

Mronz, who met Westerwelle in 2003 according to Bild, is an event manager who also organized the athletic world championship in Berlin this summer. He recently joined the Free Democrats, saying that after having listened to 120 speeches of his partner, “I am completely convinced.”

Westerwelle, who has led the Free Democrats since 2001, also spoke out for stronger civil rights during the election campaign and has criticized in the past that German law does not give complete adoption rights to gay couples.

The Lesbian and Gay Association in Germany welcomed Westerwelle’s victory and hoped his election would become a motor for gay rights in Germany.

“We think it’s awesome that it has become so normal that an openly gay man becomes foreign minister,” said Klaus Jetz, the head of the association, adding that the gay community expected him to advocate gay rights in Germany and abroad as well.

“It’s important that as foreign minister he will openly talk about human rights and the persecution of gays and lesbians in other countries.”

The gathering was to be Serbia’s first gay pride march since 2001. The previous event received almost no police protection and was broken up by rightist groups.

The planned march was seen a major test for the current Serbian government, which has launched pro-Western reforms and pledged to protect human rights.

But organizers said Saturday authorities have informed them that the march in downtown Belgrade was too risky. Spokesman Dusan Kosanovic says police offered a different venue but organizers decided to cancel the march instead.

Several extremist groups had said they would attack the gathering.

South African officials have repeatedly said tests were done only abroad, not in South Africa, before Semenya’s 800-meter world victory in Berlin.

In e-mails published Friday by Mail & Guardian, general manager of Athletics South Africa Molatelo Malehopo apparently gives team doctor Harold Adams permission to “go ahead” with tests requested by the international track and field body.

ASA president Leonard Chuene was copied in on an earlier e-mail to Malehopo asking for advice on handling the “confidential matter.”

Neither Chuene, Malehopo nor Adams were immediately available for comment.