Britain will move this winter to lift its ban on gays in the military rather than be forced to do so by rulings expected from the European Court of Human Rights and the European Court of Justice.

Proposed legislation reportedly draws on the U.S.' failed 'don't ask, don't tell' policy.

One of the European cases likely will open the floodgates for about 4,000 gays and lesbians who were kicked out of the military since 1978 to sue for damages -- at a cost to the British government of up to $1.7 billion.

"As well as compensation for loss of pay and pensions, sacked gay personnel will get massive punitive damages for being put under surveillance, arrested, interrogated, imprisoned and humiliated," said gay activist Peter Tatchell of the group OutRage! "For every week the government continues to defy the [European Union] Equal Treatment Directive, the bill grows bigger."

Forty-two percent of Brits believe gay sex is "always or mostly wrong" according to a new Health Education Authority survey.

That's down from 74 percent in a 1987 poll.

HEA spokesman Rodney Amis called the results "encouraging" because "a more tolerant attitude towards gay and bisexual men will enable HIV/AIDS health promotion to be more effective."

The survey questioned 1,442 people.

Anti-gay Member of Parliament Mike Reed, the deputy chief minister and police and fire service minister of Australia's Northern Territory, is doing some fancy talking after being caught buying gay porn on a trip to Sydney.

A Darwin man familiar with Reed's homophobic rants followed him into a sex shop and observed the purchases.

Reed claims he bought the two videos and the magazine as background material for parliamentary debate on lowering the age- of-consent for gay sex.

But opposition MPs are not having it. "Nobody believed the deputy chief minister in terms of his research story," said Opposition Leader Maggie Hickey. "It was hypocrisy of the highest order [and] we call ... on the chief minister to sack his deputy."