The Netherlands saw its first legal gay wedding January 5.

Other gay couples weren't permitted to marry until January 14 because Dutch marriages require a two-week waiting period and the gay-marriage law took effect Jan. 1. The first couple, however, was granted a dispensation because one of the men is terminally ill. Their names were not released.

The new "Registration of Partnership" law grants married gay couples all rights of matrimony except access to adoption. That exclusion may well be lifted later this year -- and then gay and straight matrimony will be identical.

Gay marriages are also legal in Denmark, Greenland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden – but they withhold rights to adoption, artificial insemination and church weddings. Hungary recognizes gay common-law marriage, granting all rights but access to adoption.

If Holland does lift the adoption exclusion later this year, it will become the first nation to legalize full matrimony for same-sex couples -- unless a long-awaited court ruling in Hawaii beats them to the punch.

GAY MARRIAGE CASE FILED IN MONTREAL

A Montreal gay man has filed suit charging that the province's refusal to let him marry his Mexican lover violates Quebec's Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

"For me and Manuel, marriage is important," Martin Dube, a 26- year-old security guard, said at a press conference. "We want the same rights as heterosexual couples."

Dube added that the governing Parti Quebecois courted gays during the 1994 campaign but hasn't done much for them since even though there are many homosexuals in positions of power.

"When it's time to take a stand, everybody's in the closet," he said.

Dube's lawyer said the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which bans discrimination based on sexual orientation, is in direct conflict with the Civil Code, which limits marriage to opposite-sex couples.

XTRA! PAPERS END ILGA BOYCOTT

Canada's biggest gay publisher has rejoined the International Lesbian and Gay Association after a two-year boycott.

Pink Triangle Press, which once rescued ILGA from bankruptcy witha $15,000 (US$10,200) donation, parted ways with the association in 1995 after ILGA demanded that member organizations sign a pledge stating they did not condone sex between adults and minors.

ILGA took that action in an attempt to regain its observer status at the United Nations, which suspended ILGA after right-wing U.S. politicians raised a ruckus over the North American Man/Boy Love Association's ILGA membership.

ILGA kicked out NAMBLA and other alleged pedophile groups but numerous ILGA members ultimately refused to sign the pledge, which was later withdrawn by ILGA's officers, and ILGA remains banned from the U.N. for failure to prove it is pedophile-free. (Meanwhile, in 1997, ILGA achieved consultative status at the Council of Europe.)

In rejoining ILGA, Pink Triangle Press Executive Director Ken Popert informed the group: "We feel that ILGA's value as an international forum outweighs its sometimes ill-judged actions. Now that it is no longer necessary for us to endorse those actions [by signing the pledge] we are content to rejoin."

Pink Triangle Press publishes Toronto's Xtra!, Ottawa's Capital Xtra and Vancouver's Xtra West.

ILGA is a federation of several hundred gay groups and individuals from more than 80 countries. It stages conferences, publishes a bulletin, issues action alerts, and networks Western nations with the growing gay movements of the Third World and former communist nations. Recent ILGA initiatives have increased gay clout within the European Union, World Health Organization and Amnesty International