The winner of Australia's ARIA music award for best female artist has come out of the closet in Outrage magazine's annual listing of the nation's most influential gays and lesbians.

Monique Brumby, 23, was joined on the list by such folks as Australian Greens Senator Bob Brown, pop guru Molly Meldrum, Super League footballer Ian Roberts, millionaire investment banker Mark Stanley, Commonwealth gold medalist discus thrower Lisa Marie Viziniari and architect Leon Van Schalk.

Among the people who refused to be listed were an influential senior judge and a highly rated conservative talk-radio host, Outrage reported.

The 2002 Gay Games will be in Sydney, Australia, it was announced last week.

Sydney beat out Dallas, Montreal, Toronto and Long Beach, which had promised a much larger budget.

New South Wales Tourism Council head Bruce Baird called the announcement "good news for Australian tourism given the last games in New York generated more than 150 million U.S. dollars for the economy."

Local morals campaigner Fred Nile fumed that "they should give them [the Games] to a city that wants it like San Francisco, or hold them on an island somewhere."

"Australia should make sure they [the athletes] are tested [for AIDS] before they leave America or any other country," Nile added. "After the Mardi Gras they have an orgy that goes until 8:00 a.m. and I expect ... that means we've got the possibility of homosexuals coming over here and spreading infection."

A Nicaraguan gay couple who got married after one of the two obtained a fake birth certificate changing his gender were arrested in Leon last week along with the people who witnessed the wedding.

The couple was taken into custody after a doctor who treated their two-month-old adopted child became suspicious and called police. They were also charged with kidnapping the baby.

Nicaragua bans same-sex marriage, and gay sex is prohibited under penalty of one to three years in prison.