Monday, June 23, 2014



Equality comes to Luxembourg

Something I missed from last week: Luxembourg has become the 17th country in the world to allow same-sex marriage:

Lawmakers in Luxembourg, whose prime minister is openly gay, have overwhelmingly approved changes in the small European nation's legislation governing marriage that will allow people of the same sex to wed and to adopt children.

The Chamber of Deputies voted 56-4 to adopt the bill, which is said to be part of the most fundamental rewrite of Luxembourg's laws on marriage since 1804. The chamber's website said the new rules could take effect in early 2015, or six months after their official publication.


The next big target is probably Germany. There's a clear pro-equality majority there both among the public and in the Bundestag, but the Social Democrats are in coalition with the bigot union (CDU/CSU), and may vote with their new friends (and to protect their Ministerial positions) rather than their supporters. The politics of that could get very ugly indeed...