LONDON (Reuters) – An eccentric aristocrat is offering his rich and famous dog Jasper — who “is a bit gay” — to act as “best man” at same-sex weddings at his country estate.

“He is the perfect best man,” Sir Benjamin Slade said of his cross-bred canine. “He will not be making any embarrassing speeches, he hoovers up all the leftover food and he is castrated.”

Jasper, a black cross between a Labrador and a Doberman, has already been in the news for inheriting a hefty bequest from Slade’s ex-mother-in-law, which has swelled to a trust fund of 150,000 pounds.

He has been dubbed the country’s richest hound with tabloids lapping up his tale of “wags to riches.”

Slade, who has been trying to drum up business for weddings at his 13th century country estate, Maunsel House, decided that Jasper could be a particular attraction to the gay community since the government legalised same-sex civil unions last year.

“He is a bit gay,” Sir Benjamin said. “He would act as the perfect best man in what is a gay-friendly house.”

So Sir Benjamin is promoting Jasper’s services on wedding Web sites aimed at same-sex couples.

The pair are even planning to travel up to London for a gay wedding fair to drum up business, although Slade says Jasper would be available for straight couples too.

“Whatever they want, he is there for them. Maybe he will be better as a bridesmaid.”

OSLO (Reuters) – The birds and the bees may be gay, according to the world’s first museum exhibition about homosexuality among animals.

With documentation of gay or lesbian behaviour among giraffes, penguins, parrots, beetles, whales and dozens of other creatures, the Oslo Natural History Museum concludes human homosexuality cannot be viewed as “unnatural”.

“We may have opinions on a lot of things, but one thing is clear — homosexuality is found throughout the animal kingdom, it is not against nature,” an exhibit statement said.

Geir Soeli, the project leader of the exhibition entitled “Against Nature”, told Reuters: “Homosexuality has been observed for more than 1,500 animal species, and is well documented for 500 of them.”

The museum said the exhibition, opening on Thursday despite condemnation from some Christians, was the first in the world on the subject. Soeli said a Dutch zoo had once organised tours to view homosexual couples among the animals.

“The sexual urge is strong in all animals. … It’s a part of life, it’s fun to have sex,” Soeli said of the reasons for homosexuality or bisexuality among animals.

One exhibit shows two stuffed female swans on a nest — birds sometimes raise young in homosexual couples, either after a female has forsaken a male mate or donated an egg to a pair of males.

One photograph shows two giant erect penises flailing above the water as two male right whales rub together. Another shows a male giraffe mounting another for sex, another describes homosexuality among beetles.

BURN IN HELL

One radical Christian said organisers of the exhibition — partly funded by the Norwegian government — should “burn in hell”, Soeli said. Laws describing homosexuality as a “crime against nature” are still on the statutes in some countries.

Greek philosopher Aristotle noted apparent homosexual behaviour among hyenas 2,300 years ago but evidence of animal homosexuality has often been ignored by researchers, perhaps because of distaste, lack of interest or fear or ridicule.

Bonobos, a type of chimpanzee, are among extremes in having sex with either males or females, apparently as part of social bonding. “Bonobos are bisexuals, all of them,” Soeli said.

Still, it is unclear why homosexuality survives since it seems a genetic dead-end.

Among theories, males can sometimes win greater acceptance in a pack by having homosexual contact. That in turn can help their chances of later mating with females, he said.

And a study of homosexual men in Italy suggested that their mothers and sisters had more offspring. “The same genes that give homosexuality in men could give higher fertility among women,” he said.

MUMBAI (Reuters) – An Indian prince has been disowned by his family after he publicly announced he was gay in a country where homosexuality is outlawed by a 145-year-old law.

Prince Manvendra Singh Gohil, who belongs to one of the country’s richest royal families that ruled the former Rajpipla principality in the western state of Gujarat, has been disowned for “activities unacceptable to the society,” one disinheritance notice placed by his parents in a newspaper said.

Last month, his parents issued notices in a Gujarati language daily withdrawing his right to the family property.

“Henceforth, no one must refer to my name as mother of Manvendra,” one notice signed by his mother said. “If any individual or organization dares to do so, it will invite contempt proceedings.”

But Gohil, 40, who announced he was gay this year, says he has found happiness among Gujarat’s gay community and is not interested in his inheritance.

“I could not have lived a lie forever,” he told Reuters on Friday.

“I will not stake my claim to the property. I have found a family in the (gay) community and am happy working for the community,” said Gohil, who runs an NGO working on HIV/ AIDS among homosexuals.

“As an activist, I thought it right to come out of the closet first. Otherwise, it would have been living a lie.”

Homosexuality is banned in India and punishable by up to 10 years in jail, but gay activists are trying to lift the veil of secrecy over the community in a country where public hugging or kissing even among heterosexuals invites angry stares, lewd comments and even beatings.

Gay support groups say the anti-homosexuality law — framed by British colonial rulers in 1861 — must be scrapped for an effective fight against HIV/AIDS because many homosexuals refuse to come out in the open fearing harassment by authorities.

UNAIDS says there are an estimated 5.7 million Indians living with HIV, many of them homosexuals.

India abolished princely kingdoms after independence from Britain in 1947, but many royal families continue to lead lavish lives in sprawling palaces.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – New statistics suggest San Francisco has the highest percentage of gay men among major cities in the world, with a quarter of them HIV-positive, a top city health official said on Friday.

“Despite an overall loss in the population in San Francisco in the last five years, we think there has been an absolute gain in gay men,” William McFarland, head of HIV/ AIDS statistics at San Francisco’s Department of Public Health, said in an interview. “From all the data I have seen … it’s the gayest city in the world.”

McFarland has compiled the city’s first survey in five years on gay men and HIV to be presented at a meeting next week to discuss HIV/AIDS prevention.

He said it found an estimated 63,577 gay males aged 15 and above in San Francisco, a city with a total population of 764,000. That figure represents nearly one in five of the city’s males above the age of 15.

0ne out of every four gay males — 25.8 percent — is infected with the HIV virus, giving San Francisco an estimated total of 16,401 HIV-positive men, said McFarland, an epidemiologist who has also worked on studies in Uganda, Zimbabwe and Egypt.

The survey indicates that the overall percentage of those living with HIV has dropped since the last study five years ago.

“The major changes since 2001 are that, first of all, the gay community has grown. It’s largely been an influx of more HIV-negative gay men that are here,” he said. “It used to be near 30 percent.

“The absolute number of gay men living with HIV has crept up partly because of ongoing transmission and partly because of improved survival with treatment,” he added.

At 40 percent, Baltimore has the highest percentage of HIV-positive men among its population in a study of five cities, with San Francisco second, according to a 2005 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study.

In coming up with his estimate of the number of gay men, McFarland said he took the middle point of nine previous studies.

McFarland acknowledged that it was difficult to get a precise number because of sensitivities over the issue. But he said San Francisco residents were likely to be more open about their sexuality than people in many other areas.

SYDNEY (Reuters) – Thousands of Australians crammed Sydney’s tiny gay quarter to applaud half-naked cowboys, gay rugby players and other scantily-dressed marchers in the city’s annual Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras parade on Saturday.

Armed with picnic baskets, blankets and beer, onlookers lined the parade’s 1.6 km (1 mile) route cheering the 6,000 participants and 120 colourful floats, many loosely adopting the theme of this year’s Oscar-hopeful blockbuster “Brokeback Mountain”, Ang Lee’s saga of gay cowboys.

The cowboys competed with themes including bare-chested men hula-hula dancing in Hawaiian grass skirts and a lesbian motorcycle club for applause from the crowd — many had been waiting hours to secure the best positions along the route.

“I didn’t want to miss any of this,” said 17-year-old Jennifer Mackay from outer Sydney, who arrived with three friends 10 hours before the start.

The parade began in 1978 to protest a ban on homosexuality in Australia, but has become more hedonistic over the years.

“It’s like Christmas for the gay and lesbian community,” said the parade’s creative director, Graeme Browning.

Homosexuality was decriminalised in Australia in 1984.

One boisterous group of marchers promoted “bisexuality and paganism”, while another implored onlookers to take pride in their leather.

A float titled “Friends of Dick Cheney” featured a nod to the U.S. Vice President who has stood by his lesbian daughter and is at odds with President George W. Bush about the need for a U.S. constitutional amendment prohibiting same-sex marriages.

Revellers traditionally carry on long into the night after the parade with police warning against public drunkenness and buying drugs from illegal street peddlers.

Parade organisers estimated the size of the crowd at around 450,000.

BERLIN (AFP) – Six gay penguins at a German zoo are still refusing to mate with females of the species flown in from Sweden in 2005, the zoo said.

The problem was that the female Humboldt penguins have proven too shy in their advances, the director of the zoo in the northern port city of Bremerhaven said.

“The Swedes will not make the first move,” Heike Kueck said.

The females were flown in last year in a bid to bring the males to mate and help save the Humboldt species from extinction.

Kueck said last year she was optimistic the initiative would be successful because zoo keepers had noticed that at one point a female penguin had managed to cause a couple of males to “separate”.

The zoo has 10 male penguins of which six have shown strong signs of preferring male company and formed couples among themselves.

The initiative to “turn” the penguins and make them mate had prompted a furious response from gay rights groups.

In a statement posted on its Internet website, the zoo on Wednesday sought to defend itself from fresh criticism.

“We will be delighted if the penguins form even one heterosexual couple and manage to produce first an egg, and then a little one,” it said.

“But of course we accept the male couples that have formed and we are not trying to enforce heterosexuality, as we were accused of doing last year.”