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rn Culture A. Homo***uality in the Western World Unlike its plight in China, homo***uality is gradually becoming a phenomenon which the Western world accepts as a natural part of human existence. In recent years, people who support homo***ual rights have worked and demonstrated to increase those rights. In the United States, the watershed event for homo***ual activism was the Stonewall riot, which protested a police raid on a gay bar in New York City in 1969. It was the first public protest by homo***uals against harassment by police. Since then, homo***ual communities in the United States have organized to work for gay rights. Such groups include the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, a civil rights organization that promotes equality and freedom from prejudice and discrimination for gays and lesbians; Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, which provides legal representation for gays and lesbians; and the Human Rights Campaign Fund, which lobbies state and national legislators. In Canada, Equality for Gays and Lesbians Everywhere (EGALE) has worked to secure equal rights for gays and lesbians and to influence federal legislation on gay rights. Canadian gay rights groups helped bring about the amendment in 1996 of the Canadian Human Rights Act to explicitly prohibit discrimination based on ***ual orientation. Other countries that have specifically outlawed discrimination against homo***uals and bi***uals include The Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand. (John F. Harvey，1997) In the 1990s and 2000s homo***ual rights groups addressed a number of other issues, including the rights of gay and lesbian families. In 2001 The Netherlands became the first country to legalize same-*** marriages, giving same-*** couples the same rights that hetero***ual couples have in areas such as inheritance, taxes, divorce, and pension benefits. Belgium legalized same-*** marriages in 2003. Spain and Canada followed suit in 2005. Canada became the fourth nation to legalize same-*** marriage and the first outside of Europe. Several other European countries recognize homo***ual unions, although these unions are generally called civil unions or registered partnerships rather than marriages. The United Kingdom, for example, permitted civil partnerships beginning in December 2005. The same month the Constitutional Court of South Africa struck down the country’s Marriage Act as unconstitutional because it did not permit same-*** marriage. The court stayed its ruling for one year to allow parliament to amend the act, but it stipulated that the ruling would go into effect regardless by December 2006. In December 2006 South Africa became the fifth country to legalize gay marriage. (Li Yinhe, 1998) In the United States, 39 states have passed laws forbidding same-*** marriages and denying recognition of same-*** marriages obtained elsewhere. In 2004, 13 states—most of which already prohibited such marriages by law—enacted constitutional amendments banning same-*** marriages, join four other states that had previously done so. Gay couples can legally marry in only one state in the United States, the state of Massachusetts. Three states—Connecticut, New Jersey, and Vermont—permit civil unions, which extend the same legal rights of marriage to same-*** couples that hetero***ual couples have under state law. Vermont legalized civil unions in 2000, Connecticut did so in 2005, and New Jersey in 2006. In addition California state law e