Same-Sex Marriage

Main articles: Same-sex marriage and Same-sex union
Since 2001, five nations have made same-sex marriage legal, namely the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Canada, and South Africa. Israel, Aruba, and the Netherlands Antilles recognize same-sex marriages from other jurisdictions. In the United States, Massachusetts and Iowa are the only states to recognize same-sex marriage under the name marriage. (The district court in Iowa which struck down the state's Defense of Marriage Act issued a stay on the ruling the next day, only one same sex couple has been married under Iowa law) Civil unions are a separate form of legal union open to couples of the same sex, often carrying the same entailments as opposite-sex marriage under a different name. Denmark was the first country in the world (in 1989) to extend the rights and responsibilities of marriage to same-sex couples under the name of registered partnership. Civil unions (and registered partnerships) are currently recognized in 24 out of 193 countries worldwide and in some U.S. states. Many U.S. states have adopted referendums or laws that generally restrict marriage recognition to opposite-sex couples. Federally, the U.S. Senate has considered, and failed to pass, a Federal Marriage Amendment. In Australia, de facto relationships are legally recognized in many, but not all, ways, with some states having registers of de facto relationships, although the federal government has amended existing legislation to specify that only marriages between a man and a woman will be recognized as 'marriages'. As a result, the Australian Capital Territory's 2006 Bill to give civil unions identical status and processes as registered marriages, was repealed by the federal government before it came into effect.

Civil unions are recognized and accepted in approximately 30 countries. Same-sex marriages have also been recorded in the history of pre-modern Europe. Same-sex marriage remains statistically insignificant worldwide, as it is not legally recognized in most countries.[clarify] However, in countries where it has been adopted, applications for marriage licenses have far exceeded governmental estimates of demand. As homosexuality has become more accepted in Western cultures, more governments are allowing and/or sanctioning unions of same-sex couples.

These developments have created a political and religious reaction in some countries, including in England, where the Church of England, after long debate, officially banned blessings of gay couples by Church of England clergy, and in the United States, where several states have specifically defined marriage as between a man and a woman, often after popular referendums, including the state of Mississippi which passed a constitutional amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman and refusing to recognize same-sex marriages from other states with 86% of the vote supporting that proposition. [3]PDF (29.9 KiB) Conversely, two states, California and Massachusetts, have sanctioned some form of same-sex unions. In addition, Lutheran churches in Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden and some Lutheran churches of the Evangelical Church in Germany allow blessing ceremonies for same-sex couples. In other countries, (such as Finland) such ceremonies are discouraged and rarely performed by the church.[citation needed]

Civil unions are a separate form of legal union open to couples of the same sex. Many more countries have legalized civil unions than those which have legalized same-sex marriage. Some religious denominations ceremonially perform civil unions, and recognize them as essentially equivalent to marriage.