Germany

BERLIN -- Gay rights campaigners won a victory over the German government Thursday as the country's top court ruled that same-sex couples in civil unions should receive the same tax benefits as heterosexual married couples. [ Read more → ]

BERLIN — Germany's highest court strengthened gay couples' adoption rights in a ruling Tuesday that the country's justice minister greeted as "a historic step." [ Read more → ]

Should Heather be allowed to marry Maria, or should John and Tom be allowed to tie the knot? Of course, because same-sex marriage doesn’t harm anyone but brings joy to two people. Unfortunately, Germany – a supposedly progressive country – hasn’t evolved beyond the level of seedy beer hall discussions. We have not yet freed ourselves from old prejudices... [ Read more → ]

BERLIN -- Gad Beck, a pioneering gay rights activist and educator in a severely anti-homosexual, repressive post-World War II German culture, has died, just six days before his 89th birthday. Beck was believed to be the last known gay Jewish survivor of the Holocaust. [ Read more → ]

A Canadian porn actor accused of the grisly murder of a Chinese man studying in Montreal that he once dated, was taken into custody in Berlin Monday, following an international manhunt. [ Read more → ]

The mayor of the German capital city has been reelected for a third term. Klaus Wowereit, who became the first openly gay leader elected to a German political state office winning his first term as Berlin's mayor in 2001, is known for his populist style of leadership favored by the city's citizens. [ Read more → ]

BERLIN -- The man thought to be the last remaining gay survivor of the Nazi Holocaust has passed away at the age of 98. Rudolf Brazda had been imprisoned by the Nazi regime for homosexuality and was sent to the Nazis’ Buchenwald concentration camp in August 1942 and held there until its liberation by U.S. forces in 1945. [ Read more → ]

Doctors in Germany claim they have cured a man who was infected with HIV. Three years after undergoing a blood stem cell transplant, Timothy Ray Brown, 44, an American patient living in Berlin,44, who was both HIV positive and stricken with Leukemia, now shows no sign of either affliction. [ Read more → ]

Germany's foreign minister Guido Westerwelle has formalized his union with his longtime partner Michael Mronz in a private ceremony in Bonn on Friday, the daily newspaper Bild announced in its Saturday edition. [caption id="attachment_10693" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Westerwelle, left, and Mronz"][/caption] Although only close family were... [ Read more → ]