Current Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has begun taking steps to live up to the commitment of his predecessor, arch-conservative Tony Abbott, to put the issue of same-sex marriage to the people in a referendum, a mandatory poll to gauge public opinion. This may seem exceptionally enlightened for a Conservative government, but it was not. The referendum was a way for Turnbull not to tear the feathers of the most right-wing members of his government and to pass the buck to a public that had already given its mandate for change. Unlike Ireland, Australia did not need a referendum to amend its constitution to legalize same-sex marriage. The High Court had already ruled in 2013 that marriage within the meaning of the Constitution includes same-sex partnerships. It only took one parliamentary vote to change the wording of an amendment to the Marriage Act 1961, 2004, an amendment that intentionally defined marriage as the union between a man and a woman. But the Turnbull government decided to pull the whole country, and the L.G.B.T.Q. community in particular, by the forced jumping of the hoop, the humiliation and trauma of the most private decisions judged again in public. A measure to legalize same-sex marriage was passed by Icelandic lawmakers in June 2010. Opinion polls conducted before the vote showed broad support for the measure, and no member of the country`s legislature voted against it.
Iceland has allowed same-sex couples to register as life partners since 1996. A decade later, Parliament passed a law allowing same-sex couples to adopt children. Same-sex couples can enter into registered partnerships in the Australian Capital Territory and Queensland. The systems include state-sanctioned ceremonies that resemble wedding ceremonies. The report found that 100 laws and regulations under federal law discriminated against same-sex couples using the term “member of the opposite sex,” from elder care, retirement savings, child care, Medicare (including the drug benefits plan) to pensions. “All the bases to which opposite-sex couples are legally entitled and take for granted” were things that were effectively forbidden to same-sex couples under the previous system. [14] The Australian Parliament has passed marriage equality laws and has almost unanimously passed legislation allowing two people, regardless of sex, to marry. Over the next 13 years, there were 22 unsuccessful attempts to legalize same-sex marriage in Parliament. [30] The Labour governments of Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard (2007-13) were divided on this issue. Despite passing a resolution at the party`s national conference in December 2011 in favor of same-sex marriage, the party held a conscience vote when two private MPs` bills to legalize same-sex marriage were debated in parliament in September 2012. [31] [32] The bill was opposed by Prime Minister Gillard and several other Labour MPs, as well as by the opposition coalition led by Tony Abbott. The first bill was defeated in the House of Representatives by a vote of 98 to 42 and a similar bill was defeated by the Senate by a vote of 41 to 26.
[33] [34] On December 7, 2017, the Australian Parliament passed legislation allowing gay and lesbian couples to legally marry. The adoption came just three weeks after Australians voted 62 per cent to 38 per cent to legalise same-sex marriage in a non-binding national referendum. Along with New Zealand, Australia became the second country in the Asia-Pacific region to legalize same-sex marriage. From 1998, the Belgian Parliament granted same-sex couples limited rights through registered partnerships. Same-sex couples could register with a city clerk and formally assume joint responsibility for a household. Five years later, in January 2003, the Belgian parliament legalized same-sex marriage, giving gay and lesbian couples the same tax and inheritance rights as heterosexual couples. Same-sex marriage became legal in Finland from 2017. The Finnish parliament passed a law legalizing same-sex partnerships in November 2014, and Finnish President Sauli Niinistö signed the measure into law in February 2015. The bill began as a “citizens` initiative” – a public petition with 167,000 signatures.
In 2008 and 2013, federal legislation made it illegal to discriminate against same-sex couples and their children. However, same-sex marriage was explicitly excluded. However, things were not 100% complete until 1996. After a lawsuit ruled in favor of a gay man`s right to be intimate with his partner, all homosexuality was officially legal. In May 2020, Costa Rica became the first Central American country to legalize same-sex marriage. The country`s highest court ruled in 2018 that the country`s law banning same-sex marriage was unconstitutional, saying the ban would be lifted in 18 months unless the legislature first acted, which it has not done. This may seem like a victory, but the victory was short-lived. In 2004, the Marriage Act 1961 was amended to define marriage exclusively as the union of one man and one woman. Legal uncertainty is not limited to States. The Constitution gives the federal Parliament power over “marriage,” but the Supreme Court has not said what that term means.
The key question is whether federal power is limited by the 19th-century constitution`s view that “marriage” means a union between a man and a woman, or whether it has evolved to encompass other relationships. George Williams, a law professor at the University of New South Wales, says the bottom line is that the parliament that first enacted same-sex marriage laws is likely to be followed by a challenge by the Supreme Court. The only opposition in parliament came from the Christian Democratic Party, which was not part of the governing coalition at the time. After the law came into force, the Protestant Church in the Netherlands, which at the time represented about 12% of the country`s population, announced that each municipality could decide whether or not to perform same-sex marriages. Although conservative Muslim and Christian groups continue to oppose the law, same-sex marriage is widely accepted by the Dutch public. In April 2014, a federal judge ruled that a heterosexual couple who had one child and had lived together for 13 years were not in a common-law relationship and that, therefore, the court did not have the authority to divide their property under family law following an application for separation.