In a history-making gesture, Danish Queen Margrethe invited a gay couple to her February 5 royal ball at Christiansborg Castle.

Margrethe and Prince Henrik stage the annual fete for members of parliament and government officials. Former health minister Torben Lund, 47, and his lover, Claus Lautrup, 30, were the lucky couple.

"We didn't want to be indifferent to the society in which we live," Royal Master of Ceremonies Christian Eugen-Olsen told the Extra Bladet newspaper.

The newspaper itself editorialized, "By welcoming a homosexual couple on the same footing as others, inviting them to dine at the finest table in the kingdom, the court has shown its respect."

In 1989, Denmark became the first nation to allow gays to marry, under a registered-partnership law that grants all rights of matrimony except access to adoption, artificial insemination and church weddings. Greenland, Iceland, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden followed in Denmark's footsteps.

THAI LESBIANS STAGE TALKFEST

The Thai lesbian group Anjaree held their first national conference last month at Bangkok's Siam City Hotel.

Entitled "The Rights of Lesbians and the Role of Academics and the Media," the confab also hosted Thailand's first lesbian theatrical performance -- a 20-minute skit written specially for the occasion.

Anjaree has 500 members and publishes a bimonthly newsletter.

SOUTH AFRICAN COP SUES FOR PARTNER BENEFITS

Johannesburg, South Africa, lesbian cop Jolanda Langemaat filed suit last week against the South African Police Service after it refused to extend medical coverage to her lover of 11 years.

Langemaat has been a police officer since 1982.

Another such suit is expected to be filed shortly by employees of the mining conglomerate Anglo-American.

South Africa is the only nation in the world that bans discrimination based on sexual orientation via its constitution.

Rex Wockner's weekly international news reports dating back to May 1994 can be searched at http://www.wockner.com.

The reports in their original form are archived at http://www.qrd.org/qrd/www/world/wockner.html, which also archives Wockner's Quote Unquote column and some of his longer gay-press articles.