Pope John Paul II denounced gay marriage February 19 during a visit with Spanish bishops at the Vatican.

"We are seeing today a trend, very widespread in some circles, that threatens the very characteristics of the family," the pope told the bishops from Catalonia and Asturias. "Same-sex unions [should not be] recognized as families, [and bishops must] proclaim with pastoral firmness the truth about marriage and the family, as God made it to be. [Marriage is] an irreplaceable asset of society, which cannot be indifferent to its degradation or destruction."

LATVIAN GAY BAR BOMBED

A gay bar was bombed in Riga, Latvia, February 10.

The 4:15 a.m. explosion outside the club Purvs destroyed the front wall and blew out all the windows in the club and surrounding buildings.

No one was injured in the blast, which, according to media speculation, may have been the work of the extremist Latvian National Democratic Party (LNDP).

LNDP literature has called for a wide-ranging campaign against homosexuals and referred to Purvs as "a den of degenerates."

A spokesman for Riga's Homosexuality Information Center called the blast "a logical consequence of the reluctance of the Latvian state authorities to resolve the problems which lesbians and gay men face and to prohibit and tackle discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation."

FRENCH PARTNERSHIP LAW PLANNED

The government of France is planning to change its civil code so cohabiting gay couples can sign contracts that give them most of the legal and tax benefits of matrimony.

The "common interest pacts" also will be available to heterosexual lovers and couples whose relationship is not sexual.

The scheme will not extend rights to adoption or state-funded artificial insemination.

Other nations with marriage-like gay-partnership laws include Denmark, Greenland, Hungary, Iceland, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden.

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.