All marriage is gay marriage
Why history says gay people can’t marry…nor can anyone else*
(*unless they have kids of their own)
By Helen Berry
I happened to be in New York at the end of June this year when the State legislature passed the Marriage Equality Operate to legalise same-sex marriage. By coincidence, it was Gay Pride weekend, and a million people waved rainbow flags in the streets of Manhattan, celebrating this landmark ruling in the campaign for lgbtq+ rights, and I was one of them.
What struck me as a visitor from the UK – where civil partnerships for same-sex couples have been legal since 2004 – was the way in which gay marriage is still such a divisive issue in American politics. The subject continues to divide the nation, and has been revived, rather than resolved, by continuing state-by-state rulings, Supreme Court challenges, and high-octane political rhetoric.
To cite just one recent example, Proposition 8 (the “California Marriage Protection Act”) was an amendment to the California constitution passed in November 2008 defending heterosexual marriage as the only legitimate form of wedding. The amendment stated that “gays…do not have the right to redefine marriage for everyone else”. F
It’s Possible: Gays and Lesbians Can Contain Happy Marriages
When Christian rock star Trey Pearson announced he was coming out of the closet and separating from his wife and their two children after seven and a half years of marriage, he said that his wife had been his “biggest supporter” and that “she just hugged me and cried and said how arrogant of me she was.”
If this account is exactly real, it is troubling. Think about the degree of social decay required—especially within Christianity—for a Christian wife to be so conditioned by widespread culture that she immediately congratulates her husband for abandoning her and their children, rather than reaching out for assist to preserve their marriage and family. A man who walks away from a marriage because of same-sex attraction is no alternative from a gentleman who abdicates his role as husband and father for sex with other women. We shouldn’t view Trey Pearson’s actions as heroically true-to-self, but as simply selfish.
I should know. I walked away from my marriage nearly twenty years ago because of my lgbtq+ attraction. I made a stunning error in judgment. Thankfully, our marriage has been very happily restored for more than five years
In places where same-sex marriages are legal, how many married homosexual couples are there?
Pew Research Center conducted this analysis to uncover out how common same-sex marriage is in countries and territories where it is legal. This analysis is based on official marriage statistics from the jurisdictions where same-sex marriage is permitted. In the United States, which does not collect marriage facts nationally, we used data from the Census Bureau’s American People Survey and Current Population Survey to estimate the share of all married-couple households with gay married couples. Figures for all other countries and territories symbolize marriages recorded in the given year.
The analysis used the most recent year for which marriage statistics were available in each country – 2020, 2021 or 2022, depending on the nation. For the United Kingdom, that was 2020 because, even though the statistical agencies for Scotland and Northern Ireland had statistics for 2021, the office for England and Wales did not. (Bear in mind that the number of marriages that occurred in these places may hold been impacted by COVID-19 restrictions on gatherings.)
Other jurisdictions were excluded from t
Marriage Equality Around the World
The Human Rights Campaign tracks developments in the legal recognition of same-sex marriage around the earth. Working through a worldwide network of HRC global alumni and partners, we lift up the voices of people, national and regional advocates and split tools, resources, and lessons learned to empower movements for marriage equality.
Current State of Marriage Equality
There are currently 38 countries where same-sex marriage is legal: Andorra, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Denmark, Ecuador, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Malta, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, the Joined Kingdom, the Together States of America and Uruguay.
These countries have legalized marriage equality through both legislation and court decisions.
Countries that Legalized Marriage Equality in 2025
Liechtenstein: On May 16, 2024, Liechtenstein's government passed a bill in favor of marriage equality. The law went into effe