Australia

HOBART, Tasmania, Australia — After more than four hours of debate on Thursday, Tasmania’s House of Assembly passed a bill that would legalize same-sex marriage in the Australian island state.

The Republican National Convention gets down to business today in Tampa, Fla., where delegates are expected to overwhelmingly pass the Republican Party platform that is unequivocally against marriage for gay and lesbian couples. Despite that, could 2012 turn out to be the year of marriage equality?

HOBART, Tasmania, Australia — Tasmania’s Premier Lara Giddings, during a speech delivered to the State Labor Party conference Saturday, announced that she would move to legislate same-sex marriage equality by the end of the year.

There are so many groups throughout the world of people who just happily, or nearly so, manage to survive day to day. They might be religious, have no belief except in any crises of their existence, or no desire to believe beyond their own personal intimacy with the deity of their choice. Then there are those who want their religious choice to be everyone’s. Even more threatening and annoying are those who think they must be the deliverer of salvation to the rest of humanity…

Just hours after the LGBT advocacy group “Truth Wins Out” published an interview in which a senior Salvation Army official in Australia said the belief that gays must die is part of the Salvation Army’s “Christian doctrine,” the organization on Saturday issued an apology to the LGBT community.

BRISBANE, Australia — Conservative lawmakers in the parliament of the Australian state of Queensland have voted to redefine civil partnerships, downgrading them to the lessor class of “registered relationships,” and said they also plan to ban same-sex couples from having children through surrogacy.

Marriage equality took center stage again on Monday, with progress on both coasts — in Washington out west, and in the east, New Jersey.

Here’s the wrap-up for Sunday, February 12, 2012, and a preview on some stories making news on Monday.

In terms of the news — international reporting — this was the year of same-sex marriage. Same-sex marriage (or ‘marriage equality’ or ‘gay marriage’) was a leading international concern — whether in the West or raised as a chimeric threat, particularly in Africa.

A new law in Ireland means that New Yorkers now have more rights on the Emerald Isle than they do in their own country. A hospital in Tennessee violates federal guidelines in denying visitation to a lesbian couple. There’s a new ad for marriage equality in New Hampshire that epitomizes Yankee thrift. And 20,000 Australian doctors agree: marriage equality is good for your head.