A court in the eastern French city of Besançon has ordered local authorities to grant a school teacher and her partner adoption rights, ending an 11-year legal battle that has divided the country.
US President Barack Obama has signed a 680-billion-dollar defence spending bill that also contains an attached measure expanding the definition of federal hate crimes to those committed because of sexual orientation.
The week in the Americas focuses on the Cayman Islands, a little tax haven suffering from the crisis, explains the debates about homosexuality in the US army and shows how the world reacted the the Obama's peace Nobel Prize.
A day after US President Barack Obama vowed to repeal a ban on gays serving openly in the US military, tens of thousands of gay activists marched on Washington Sunday to pressure Obama and Democrats to follow through on their promise.
President Barack Obama, speaking on the eve of a major gay-rights march, told gay supporters on Saturday he would fight for their causes and renewed a pledge to end restrictions on their service in the U.S. military.
Frédéric Mitterrand, the French culture minister facing pressure to resign over a book in which he describes paying for "boys" in Thailand, has threatened to take legal action over what he describes as a "campaign of insensitive calumny".
France's Culture Minister Frederic Mitterrand has denied being a paedophile in an emotional television appearance in which he admitted paying for sex with 'boys' in Thailand. He rejected calls for his resignation.
