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Here are the countries where same-sex marriage is officially legal
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June 26 marks the fifth anniversary of gay marriage being legalized across the entire United States.
To commemorate this milestone in LGBTQ history, we are taking a look at countries around the world that have officially legalized same-sex marriage. Nearly 30 out of 195 countries have passed laws allowing gay marriage , according to the Pew Research Center .
Below is a timeline for the countries where same-sex marriage is officially legal. The year marks when the law was first enacted in that country.
The country became the first in the world to legalize same-sex marriage. The following year, four couples married in the world’s first same-sex wedding in 2001. [Associated Press]
Three years after the new law was enacted, the country’s parliament granted same-sex couples the right to adopt in 2006. [Pew Research Center]
The nation's traditional definition of civil marriage was changed to include the union between same-sex couples. [Pew Research Center]
The new law gave same-sex couples all of the same marital and adoption rights as heterosexual citizens. [Pew Research Center]
The measure passed by a margin of greater than five-to-one with support from major opposing political parties. [Pew Research Center]
One year after legalizing same-sex marriage, the country’s Lutheran Church voted to allow its pastors to marry same-sex couples in 2009. [Pew Research Center]
Months before the bill passed in October 2009, the country’s governing church board initiated a petition to permit same-sex marriages. [Pew Research Center]
Argentina was the first country in Latin America to legalize same-sex marriage. [Pew Research Center]
Six years after Portugal's parliament legalized same-sex marriage, the country granted gay couples the right to adopt. [Reuters]
Iceland legalized same-sex marriage in a unanimous vote. [Pew Research Center]
Prior to legalizing same-sex marriage, Denmark was the first country to recognize same-sex couples as domestic partners. [Pew Research Center]
The country’s inclusive legislation of LGBT rights began to attract thousands of tourists each year after same-sex marriage became legal in 2013. [National LGBT Chamber of Commerce]
Over 3,700 marriages took place in 2013 after same-sex marriage was legalized. [GLAAD]
The measure to legalize same-sex marriage in New Zealand won approval by a 77-44 margin. [Pew Research Center]
After the landmark decision was made, former U.K. Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said, "No matter who you are and who you love, we are equal." [BBC]
The first same-sex wedding took place in France and was greatly supported by the public. [BBC]
The new law was the first major reform of the country’s marriage laws since 1804. [Pew Research Center]
Three years after the majority of the Scottish Parliament voted to legalize same-sex marriage, the Scottish Episcopal Church became the U.K.'s first major Christian church to perform same-sex marriages. [BBC]
The hashtag #LoveWins almost immediately became the No. 1 trending hashtag in the world on Twitter after the U.S. legalized same-sex marriage .
Ireland was the first country to legalize same-sex marriage through a popular vote. [Pew Research Center]
A bill calling for the legislation of same-sex marriage started out as a "citizen's initiative" with a reported 167,000 signatures. [Pew Research Center]
The country's legislators passed a bill to legalize same-sex marriage on the world's biggest island. [Pew Research Center]
The country enacted the new law by a 6-3 vote: “All people are free to choose independently to start a family in keeping with their sexual orientation.” [Pew Research Center]
Parliament’s vote to legalize same-sex marriage was nearly unanimous despite criticism from the Catholic Church. [Pew Research Center]
The LGBT rights advocates celebrated the new law outside Australia’s Parliament House before the final decision was announced .
The country’s bill received an overwhelming amount of public support. Parliament approved the measure in a 393-226 vote. [Pew Research Center]
In 2010, the country allowed gay and lesbian couples to enter into a civil partnership, and on Jan. 1, 2019, Austria legalized same-sex marriage. Two Austrian women wed in the country's first legal same-sex marriage. [ The Associated Press ]
On May 17, Taiwan became the first country in Asia to allow same-sex marriages between gay and lesbian couples. Demonstrators, LGBTQ rights supporters and protesters filled the streets, awaiting the vote outside the parliament building in Taipei. LGBTQ activist Jay Lin told ABC News that he was "so happy to be living in Taiwan and witnessing that day."
Ecuador has become the 5th nation in Latin America to legalize same-sex marriage. The country's highest court approved same-sex marriage on June 12, 2019, marking the 50th anniversary of the worldwide gay equality movement. [ Reuters ]
In October 2019, U.K. Parliament passed legislation to legalize same-sex marriage in Northern Ireland. The law went into action on January, 13, 2020 and made same-sex marriage legal in the entire United Kingdom.
Same-sex marriage has been legal in England, Scotland and Wales since 2014 but was not recognized by Northern Ireland’s legislature, Stormont. MPs at Westminster stepped in to change regulations for same-sex marriage and abortion following Stormont’s collapse. [ BBC ]
Costa Rica became the first country in Central America to recognize same-sex marriages after a landmark ruling from the country's Supreme Court went into effect on May 26, 2020. Daritza Araya and Alexandra Quirós were one of the first people to wed after the ban ended at midnight and the two women streamed the ceremony live online. The law went into effect in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic and the service was performed by a notary wearing a mask. [ AP ]
The Swiss Parliament adopted a bill that recognized same-sex marriage on Dec. 18, 2020. However, it was announced in April 2021 that critics of the law had gathered enough valid signatures to call for a national referendum, which will take place on Sept. 26, 2021.
The Swiss government said it is in favor of its “marriage for all” referendum in a written statement this June , saying that “couples of the same sex should have the same rights as couples of different sex.” If it passes, Switzerland would become the 30th country to legalize same-sex marriage. [ Reuters ]
This piece was originally published on June 22, 2018.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Further information: History of lesbianism
Further information: Butch and femme
Further information: Lesbian literature
Further information: LGBT parenting
^ "Lesbian and fluid women were more exclusive than bisexual women in their sexual behaviors...Lesbian women appeared to lean toward exclusively same-sex attractions and behaviors...[and] appeared to demonstrate a 'core' lesbian orientation." [6]
^ An attempt by natives of Lesbos (also called "Mytilene" in Greece) in 2008 to reclaim the word to refer only to people from the island was unsuccessful in a Greek court. Inhabitants of Lesbos claimed the use of lesbian to refer to female homosexuality violated their human rights and "disgrace[d] them around the world". [10]
^ In Germany between 1898 and 1908 over a thousand articles were published regarding the topic of homosexuality. [20] Between 1896 and 1916, 566 articles on women's "perversions" were published in the United States. [21]
^ In a rare instance of sexuality being the focus of a romantic friendship, two Scottish schoolteachers in the early 19th century were accused by a student of visiting in the same bed, kissing, and making the bed shake. The student's grandmother reported the teachers to the authorities, who were skeptical that their actions were sexual in nature, or that they extended beyond the bounds of normal friendship: "Are we to say that every woman who has formed an intimate friendship and has slept in the same bed with another is guilty? Where is the innocent woman in Scotland?" [68]
^ Wollstonecraft and Blood set up a girls' boarding school so they could live and work together, and Wollstonecraft named her first child after Blood. Wollstonecraft's first novel Mary: A Fiction , in part, addressed her relationship with Fanny Blood. [72]
^ First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt exchanged rings with and wrote letters to journalist Lorena Hickok , expressing her love and desire to kiss Hickock; her writings were in the style of romantic friendship. The view that Roosevelt's relationship with Hickok may have been sexual, therefore deserving of the lesbian label, created controversy among Roosevelt's biographers. [81]
^ Other historical figures rejected being labeled as lesbians despite their behavior: Djuna Barnes , author of Nightwood , a novel about an affair Barnes had with Thelma Wood , earned the label "lesbian writer", which she protested by saying, "I am not a lesbian. I just loved Thelma." Virginia Woolf , who modeled the hero/ine in Orlando on Vita Sackville-West , with whom she was having an affair, set herself apart from women who pursued relationships with other women by writing, "These Sapphists love women; friendship is never untinged with amorosity." [84]
^ Historian Vern Bullough published a paper based on an unfinished study of mental and physical traits performed by a lesbian in Salt Lake City during the 1920s and 1930s. The compiler of the study reported on 23 of her colleagues, indicating there was an underground lesbian community in the conservative city. Bullough remarked that the information was being used to support the attitude that lesbians were not abnormal or maladjusted, but it also reflected that women included in the study strove in every way to conform to social gender expectations, viewing anyone who pushed the boundaries of respectability with hostility. Bullough wrote, "In fact, their very success in disguising their sexual orientation to the outside world leads us to hypothesize that lesbianism in the past was more prevalent than the sources might indicate, since society was so unsuspecting." [106]
^ "Prior to 1939, lesbians were among those imprisoned as 'asocials', a broad category applied to all people who evaded Nazi rule." [112]
^ A similar statement appeared in a militant feminist pamphlet in Leeds, England , stating "Our definition of a political lesbian is a woman-identified woman who does not fuck men. It does not mean compulsory sexual activity with women." [137] See: Leeds Revolutionary Feminist Group
^ Sexual contact, according to Kinsey, included lip kissing, deep kissing, body touching, manual breast and genital stimulation, oral breast and genital stimulation, and object-vaginal penetration. [188]
^ The study estimated the total population of gays, lesbians, and bisexuals at 8.8 million, but did not differentiate between men and women. [199]
^ Another summary of overall surveys found that women who identify as lesbian, 80–95% had previous sexual contact with men, and some report sexual behavior that was risky. [207]
^ A 1966 survey of psychological literature on homosexuality began with Freud's 1924 theory that it is a fixation on the opposite sex parent. As Freud's views were the foundation of psychotherapy, further articles agreed with this, including one in 1951 that asserted that homosexuals are actually heterosexuals that play both gender roles, and homosexuals are attempting to perpetuate "infantile, incestuous fixation(s)" on relationships that are forbidden. [218]
^ Lesbian and bisexual women are also more likely to report symptoms of multiple disorders that include major depression, panic disorder, alcohol and drug abuse. [223]
^ Sappho has also served as a subject of many works of literature by writers such as John Donne , Alexander Pope , Pierre Louÿs , and several anonymous writers, that have addressed her relationships with women and men. She has been used as an embodiment of same-sex desire, and as a character in fictions loosely based on her life. [229]
^ The cross-dressing Sand was also the subject of a few of Elizabeth Barrett Browning 's sonnets. [246]
^ A fifth novel in 1928, American author Djuna Barnes' Ladies Almanack , is a roman à clef of a lesbian literary and artistic salon in Paris and circulated at first within those circles; Susan Sniader Lanser calls it a "sister-text" to Hall's landmark work, [251] as Barnes includes a character based on Radclyffe Hall and passages that may be a response to The Well of Loneliness [252]
^ 21 Jump Street included a kiss between series regular Holly Robinson Peete and guest star Katy Boyer in "A Change of Heart" (1990) but it did not inspire the critical or popular attention later such kisses would engender. [285]
^ Zimmerman, Bonnie, ed. (2000). "Symbols (by Christy Stevens)" . Lesbian Histories and Cultures: An Encyclopedia . Vol. 1 (Encyclopedia of Lesbian and Gay Histories and Cultures) (1st ed.). Garland Publishing . p. 748 . ISBN 0-8153-1920-7 .
^ Stearn, William T. (May 1962). "The Origin of the Male and Female Symbols of Biology" (PDF) . Taxon . 11 (4): 109–113. doi : 10.2307/1217734 . ISSN 0040-0262 . JSTOR 1217734 . Retrieved 23 July 2019 .
^ Jump up to: a b "Lesbian" . Oxford Reference . Retrieved December 10, 2018 .
^ Jump up to: a b Zimmerman, p. 453.
^ Jump up to: a b c Committee on Lesbian Health Research Priorities; Neuroscience and Behavioral Health Program; Health Sciences Policy Program, Health, Sciences Section, Institute of Medicine (1999). Lesbian Health: Current Assessment and Directions for the Future . National Academies Press . p. 22. ISBN 0309174066 . Retrieved October 16, 2013 .
^ Jump up to: a b c Farr, Rachel H.; Diamond, Lisa M.; Boker, Steven M. (2014). "Female Same-Sex Sexuality from a Dynamical Systems Perspective: Sexual Desire, Motivation, and Behavior" . Archives of Sexual Behavior . 43 (8): 1477–1490. doi : 10.1007/s10508-014-0378-z . ISSN 0004-0002 . PMC 4199863 . PMID 25193132 .
^ Foster, p. 18.
^ Aldrich, pp. 47–49.
^ Gollmann, Wilhelm (1855). The Homeopathic Guide, In All Diseases of the Urinary and Sexual Organs, Including the Derangements Caused by Onanism and Sexual Excesses . Charles Julius Hempel ; J. Emerson Kent. Philadelphia: Rademacher & Sheek. p. 201.
^ Lesbos locals lose lesbian appeal , BBC News Europe [July 22, 2008]. Retrieved on February 3, 2009.
^ Swinburne, Algernon Charles (10 August 2021). "Sapphics" . poetryfoundation . Poetry Foundation.
^ Cohen, Margaret; Dever, Carolyn, eds. (2001). "Chapter Ten: Comparative Sapphism, Sharon Marcus ". The Literary Channel: The Inter-National Invention of the Novel (PDF) . Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press . pp. 251–285. ISBN 978-0691050010 . (Document made available by Columbia University Libraries . PDF downloads automatically.)
^ Jump up to: a b c Zimmerman, pp. 776–777.
^ "Lesbian", Oxford English Dictionary , Second Edition, 1989. Retrieved on January 7, 2009.
^ Aldrich, p. 168.
^ Faderman (1981), p. 241.
^ Faderman (1981), p. 242.
^ Faderman (1981), p. 240.
^ Jennings, p. 77.
^ Faderman (1981), p. 248
^ Faderman (1991), p. 49.
^ Aldrich, 178–179.
^ Jump up to: a b Rust, Paula C. (November 1992). "The Politics of Sexual Identity: Sexual Attraction and Behavior among Lesbian and Bisexual Women". Social Problems . 39 (4): 366–386. doi : 10.2307/3097016 . JSTOR 3097016 .
^ Jump up to: a b Aldrich, p. 239.
^ Bendix, Trish (September 8, 2015). "Why don't lesbians have a pride flag of our own?" . AfterEllen . Archived from the original on September 9, 2015 . Retrieved 23 July 2019 .
^ Andersson, Jasmine (July 4, 2019). "Pride flag guide: what the different flags look like, and what they all mean" . i . Archived from the original on 24 August 2019 . Retrieved 24 August 2019 .
^ Rawles, Timothy (July 12, 2019). "The many flags of the LGBT community" . San Diego Gay & Lesbian News . Archived from the original on July 12, 2019 . Retrieved 24 August 2019 .
^ "Lesbian Flag, Sadlesbeandisaster" . Majestic Mess . April 2019. Archived from the original on 8 June 2019 . Retrieved 24 August 2019 .
^ Murphy-Kasp, Paul (6 July 2019). "Pride in London: What do all the flags mean?" . BBC News . Retrieved 11 July 2019 .
^ McCormick, pp. 60–61.
^ Faderman (1991), pp. 246–252.
^ Faderman, Lillian (April 1992). "The Return of Butch and Femme: A Phenomenon in Lesbian Sexuality in the 1980s and 1990s". Journal of the History of Sexuality . 2 (4): 578–596. JSTOR 3704264 .
^ Nichols, Margaret (2004). "Lesbian sexuality/female sexuality: Rethinking 'lesbian bed death' ". Sexual and Relationship Therapy . 19 (4): 363–371. doi : 10.1080/14681990412331298036 . S2CID 143879852 .
^ Schlager, p. 93.
^ R Dennis Shelby; Kathleen Dolan (2014). Lesbian Women and Sexual Health: The Social Construction of Risk and Susceptibility . Routledge . p. 34. ISBN 978-1317718192 . Retrieved April 11, 2018 .
^ Lisa M. Diamond (2009). Sexual Fluidity . Harvard University Press . pp. 105–106. ISBN 978-0674033696 . Retrieved July 20, 2014 .
^ Brogan, Donna; Frank, Erica; Elon, Lisa; O'Hanlan, Katherine A. (2001). "Methodologic Concerns in Defi
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