Equality comes to Greece

The Greek Parliament has voted for marriage equality:

Greece has become the first Christian Orthodox-majority country to legalise same-sex marriage.

Same-sex couples will now also be legally allowed to adopt children after Thursday's 176-76 vote in parliament.

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said the new law would "boldly abolish a serious inequality".

Good. But there are still EU members who refuse to recognise marriage equality, or have constitutions specifically enshrining bigotry. The ECHR needs to step in and deal with them.

Equality comes to Chile

Chile's legislature has voted overwhelmingly for equal marriage:

Lawmakers in Chile on Tuesday legalized same-sex marriage, a landmark victory for gay rights activists that underscores how profoundly the country’s politics and society have shifted in the past decade.

By overwhelming majorities in both chambers, lawmakers put the unions of same-sex couples on par with others, making Chile the 31st nation to allow gay marriage and taking a significant step toward consolidating it as the norm in Latin America.

Good. And on the latter front, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights rule in 2018 that countries must recognise same-sex marriage; hopefully the remaining countries will hurry up and implement it.

Progress in Europe

There's a lot of votes in Europe today, and the headline after the German election is that the Swiss have voted overwhelmingly for marriage equality in a referendum:

Swiss voters have decided by a clear margin to allow same-sex couples to marry, in a referendum that brings the Alpine nation into line with many others in western Europe.

Official results showed the measure passed with 64.1% of voters in favour and won a majority in all of Switzerland’s 26 cantons.

Switzerland’s parliament and the governing federal council supported the “Marriage for All” measure, and pre-referendum polls showed solid backing. Switzerland has authorised same-sex civil partnerships since 2007.

Its good news, which officially brings Switzerland into the civilised world while further marginalising the bigot-states. Marriages should start in a couple of months.

And in other good news, Berlin voted to expropriate its large corporate landlords. Its a non-binding referendum, but the acid is really going to be on the politicians to obey. And San Marino finally legalised abortion.

Equality comes to Costa Rica

Costa Rica has become the first country in Central America to recognise same-sex marriage:

The first same-sex weddings have taken place in Costa Rica, the first Central American country to equalise its marriage legislation.

A lesbian couple became the first to tie the knot in a ceremony that took place just after the new law came into effect at midnight.

The wedding was shown on national TV.

President Carlos Alvarado said the law change meant Costa Rica now recognised the rights lesbian and gay people had always deserved.

As in other countries, this change was made by the courts: in 2018 Costa Rica's Supreme Court implemented a ruling of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and declared provisions prohibiting same-sex marriage to be unconstitutional. They gave the legislature 18 months to fix the law. They didn't, so the ban was abolished.

Northern Ireland joins the civilised world

Same-sex marriage has finally become legal in Northern Ireland. But not through any decision of the Northern Irish Executive or Assembly, which has only just reformed after a three year walkout by the DUP; instead, Westminster made that decision for them. I've talked before about the constitutional impropriety of this, but now that Northern Ireland has a government again, it also has to face the reality that there was always a majority in the Assembly for this, and the only thing stopping it was the DUP's veto. And if they try and repeal it, they are going to lose.

Meanwhile, gay couples in Northern Ireland will be freer to live their lives, and legal bigotry eroded, and that's something worth celebrating. And in a month, there'll be the usual photos of happy couples. We should all be happy with them.

Equality comes to Northern Ireland

Northern Ireland is the Alabama of the UK: a backwards region where women and gay people are denied fundamental rights. But Westminster has just decided to fix that:

MPs have voted resoundingly to extend same-sex marriage and access to abortion to Northern Ireland, bringing the region into line with the rest of the UK on the two significant social issues.

The two historic votes, arriving within little more than a quarter of an hour of each other, were greeted ecstatically by equalities campaigners. With ministers promising to respect the results, they could have vital repercussions for people in Northern Ireland.

[...]

The changes came via amendments to an otherwise technical government bill connected to budgets and elections for the devolved assembly. In the first amendment, tabled by the Labour MP Conor McGinn, a longstanding campaigner for equal marriage in Northern Ireland, the Commons voted 383 to 73 to extend it to the region.

Its good news, and yet I'm also disquieted, because this vote violates fundamental UK constitutional norms. Northern Ireland has a devolved administration, and marriage equality and abortion rights sits squarely within that government's jurisdiction. Westminster overriding devolved administrations and legislating for them in their areas of competence without their consent is Not A Good Thing. Instead, it just seems like more odious English colonialism, no matter how well-intentioned.

And on the other hand: thanks to the DUP's antics, Northern Ireland hasn't had a government for the past two and a half years, and Westminster is having to legislate for them anyway out of necessity in order to ensure things keep working. But this goes well beyond keeping things ticking over, and its part of a disturbing trend of Westminster overstepping the constitutional mark and purporting to legislate for devolved regions (e.g. self-governing overseas territories and the Channel Islands on money laundering).

And on the gripping hand: if Northern Ireland doesn't like this, they can always declare independence, or unite with the Republic of Ireland (which has both same-sex marriage and abortion now). Or just stop pissing about, get their devolved parliament working again, and repeal it. Except they won't be able to, because there's in fact a parliamentary majority at Stormont for marriage equality, and the only thing which kept it illegal was the special rights of Ulster bigots under the Good Friday Agreement. So, this law probably isn't going anywhere, and the bigots are just going to have to get used to it.

Equality comes to Ecuador

Ecuador's Constitutional Court has legalised same-sex marriage:

Ecuador's highest court has approved same-sex marriage in a landmark ruling in the traditionally Catholic country.

The vote at the nine-member Constitutional Court came as they ruled on the lawsuits by two same-sex couples who wanted to get married.

Five voted in favour, arguing all people were equal. Four said the issue had to be debated in parliament.

Interestingly, Ecuador's constitution has an explicit bigot amendment restricting marriage to opposite genders. The Constitutional Court has effectively over-ruled that. Its an interesting development, which suggests that where there are existing anti-discrimination clauses or binding international agreements (in this case the American Convention on Human Rights), such clauses might not be as useful as bigots think.

Equality (finally) comes to Taiwan

Back in 2017, Taiwan's highest court ruled that violated “the people’s freedom of marriage” and “the people’s right to equality”, and gave the legislature to enact a marriage equality law. And over the weekend, just one week before the deadline expired, they finally did it:

Taiwan has legalised same-sex marriage, the first of any Asian state, with the passage of legislation giving gay couples the right to marry.

Lawmakers on Friday comfortably passed part of a bill that would allow gay couples to enter into “exclusive permanent unions” and apply for marriage registration with government agencies.

Taiwan’s president, Tsai Ing-wen, who campaigned on a platform of marriage equality, tweeted after the vote: “We took a big step towards true equality, and made Taiwan a better country.”

The government had a gun to its head, in that if they hadn't legislated, a court order would have come into effect allowing same-sex marriage. And while the current president supports equality, in the interim they have had a bigot referendum which sought to restrict marriage rights and permanently exclude gay couples. The law tries to dance a line between the court order and the referendum. Whether it manages that successfully will I guess be decided by the courts.

Bigotry loses in Romania

Romanians went to the polls over the weekend to vote in a constitutional referendum to ban same-sex marriage. Or rather, they didn't - because the referendum failed due to miserably low turnout:

A referendum to establish a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage in Romania has failed - after only a fifth of voters bothered to turn out.

Romanians were being asked whether they wanted the constitution changed to specify that marriage can only be between a man and a woman.

But just 20.4% of eligible voters cast ballots - short of the 30% needed.

The referendum appears to have been a plot by the government to distract from ongoing corruption scandals by appealing to bigotry. Fortunately it didn't work. Those who opposed the change boycotted the poll, holding boycott parties instead. Unfortunately Romania still doesn't recognise equal marriage in law - but at least there's not a constitutional prohibition on it. Meaning that that failure to recognise can easily be overturned by the European Court on Human Rights when it catches up with the rest of society and recognises such legal bigotry as fundamentally incompatible with the ECHR's affirmations of equality and non-discrimination.

A victory for equality in the EU

Western Europe has led the way on marriage equality, with same-sex marriage laws being passed in virtually all former NATO states. But eastern Europe has lagged behind, and some states such as Poland are virulently homophobic. But today, thanks to a European Court of Justice decision, things got a little better:

EU countries that have not legalised gay marriage must respect the residency rights of same-sex spouses who want to live together in their territory, the European court of justice has ruled, in a move hailed as a victory for human dignity.

The ECJ said member states must recognise the rights of all married couples to free movement, no matter their gender or sexual orientation.

The ruling came in response to a case in which Romanian authorities were accused of discriminating against Adrian Coman, who wanted to be able to live in his home country with his American husband, Claibourn Robert Hamilton, with whom he had been living for four years in the US before they married in Brussels in 2010.

Romanian authorities refused to grant Hamilton a right of residence on the grounds that he could not be classified in Romania as the spouse of an EU citizen. The men had appealed to Romania’s constitutional court, which referred the case to Luxembourg.

Effectively, the EU's bigot-bloc will now have to recognise same-sex marriages from other jurisdictions, at least in immigration decisions. And that in turn is likely to feed in to other government discrimination as well. It's not an ECHR decision declaring bans on same-sex marriage to be discriminatory and unlawful, but its still progress.

Equality finally comes to Australia

The Australian parliament has finally passed its same-sex marriage bill. Unlike New Zealand, where MPs simply introduced and voted for a member's bill, the Australian government forced its citizens to participate in a non-binding postal referendum, exposing gay Australians to an outburst of hate speech. When the referendum failed to produce the result the bigots wanted (because they're a minority even in racist, bigoted Australia), they then tried to wreck the resulting legislation with amendments which would have effectively nullified anti-discrimination law and allowed widespread discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Fortunately, those amendments failed. And in the end, the bill was passed without even a head count, because those "opposing" it weren't actually willing to go on record as voting against it.

In other words, the opposition to marriage equality wasn't principled, wasn't from people who actually cared. It was from people who knew better trying to pander to the very worst in society. What a pack of arseholes. Australia needs, and deserves, better politicians than this.

Australia votes for equality

The results of the Australian Marriage Law Postal Survey were released today, showing a 61.6% majority in favour of marriage equality. Good. And now maybe Australia can join the civilised world and actually legislate, rather than trying to remain a bigoted backwater? But before it does, I suppose we'll have to watch another orgy of autophagy from the Australian "Liberal" Party, as its bigots desperately try to pretend they're still living in the C19th. Not to mention attempts to roll back basic anti-discrimination laws to enable bigotry. This people would be justifiably outraged if shops refused to serve them on the basis of their bigoted religious views, but they think the same protections shouldn't apply to gay people. Which just shows how hypocritical the bigots are.

Meanwhile, while Australians are in a progressive mood, maybe they could release the refugees they are currently torturing in concentration camps as well?

Equality comes to Malta

Earlier in the month the German Parliament voted for marriage equality. And now Malta has followed suit:

MPs on the predominantly Catholic island of Malta have voted to legalise same-sex marriage.

In a vote passed by 66-1, Malta’s parliament approved legislation replacing the traditional "you are now husband and wife" declaration in civil ceremonies with "you are now spouses”.

The sole MP who voted against the change said he did so because of his faith.

One more down. And hopefully the rest of the world will follow suit soon.

Equality comes to Germany

Over the weekend the German Parliament voted for marriage equality:

German MPs have voted in favour of legalising same-sex marriage, prompting joyous and unusual scenes in parliament as Green party politicians tossed glittered confetti across the chamber and gay couples sitting in the public gallery kissed and embraced.

The vote by 393 to 226, with four abstentions, followed 40 minutes of often heated and highly emotional debate, reflecting a wider, decades-long argument over marriage equality. The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, voted against the move, despite having paved the way for the law’s passage by inviting MPs to vote according to their conscience.

Like New Zealand getting MMP, this appears to have come about by accident: Merkel made some comments in the media about it being time to vote on the issue in an effort to pre-position herself to accept marriage equality as the price of government in a future coalition deal, but the Social Democrats called her bluff and got a bill up quickly. And so suddenly Germany has joined the modern world. Which leaves Italy as the next major target in Europe.

Equality comes to Taiwan

Taiwan's highest court has ruled in favour of marriage equality:

Taiwan is to become the first country in Asia to legalise same-sex marriage, after the island’s constitutional court ruled current laws defining unions as between a man and a woman are invalid.

Taiwan’s highest court, the council of grand justices, said barring gay couples from marrying violated “the people’s freedom of marriage” and “the people’s right to equality”.

“Sexual orientation is an immutable characteristic that is resistant to change,” the court said in its ruling. “The freedom of marriage for two persons of the same sex, once legally recognised, will constitute the collective basis, together with opposite-sex marriage, for a stable society.”

The island’s parliament has two years to amend or enact laws addressing same-sex unions, otherwise gay couples will automatically be allowed to register under the current framework. Two of the 14 justices dissented and one recused himself.

There is currently marriage equality legislation before the Taiwanese parliament, which the government has been struggling to pass due to a conservative backlash. This will make its passage a near-certainty. One way or another, equality is coming to Taiwan.

No hate referendum in Australia

Australians support marriage equality. But their bigoted government doesn't. And rather than accept that society has moved on from the 1950's and legislating accordingly, they've been insisting that equality will only happen if they can hold a giant bigot hatefest and dodge responsibility for it via a referendum (or "plebiscite" as they call it over there). But now, that plan has gone down in flames:

The Turnbull government's proposed plebiscite on same-sex marriage has formally been killed off by the Senate, where it was defeated 29-33 in a late-night vote on Monday, amid a warning the decision would delay marriage equality "for years".

Months of speculation and political posturing culminated in Labor, the Greens, the Nick Xenophon Team and Derryn Hinch combining to defeat the proposal, which would have seen same-sex marriage decided by the Australian people in February.

The decision - an inevitability since Labor pledged to oppose the plebiscite four weeks ago - will force a new conversation about marriage equality that will divide the Coalition and threatens to destabilise the Turnbull government.

Good. Fundamental rights should not be subject to the votes of bigots. And now the only option is for Parliament to do its job and legislate. Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull once supported that path; now he opposes it in order to pander to bigots in his caucus.

Australia's backwards politicians

In New Zealand, we resolved the question of same-sex marriage through an (overwhelmingly supportive) vote in Parliament. Meanwhile, in Australia, politicians are dragging their feet, with the ruling "Liberal" party (which isn't) demanding that progress can only be by referendum - in other words, LGBT people can only have their fundamental right to marry recognised if politicians can't be held responsible for it, and if bigots get to mount a giant public hatefest first. But it turns out that the public they're so afraid of are overwhelmingly supportive of gay rights, and a referendum would lose in only a single rural electorate:

Just one electorate in the country has a majority of voters opposed to same-sex marriage, according to new research that suggests MPs and public debate significantly trail voters in backing change.

The University of Melbourne-led study found opposition to changing the Marriage Act ranges from 40 to just over 50 per cent in a handful of rural Queensland and northern NSW seats to less than 10 per cent in inner-city electorates in Sydney and Melbourne.

Maranoa, in outback south-western Queensland and held by the Coalition's David Littleproud, has just over 50 per cent of voters who do not want a change to allow same-sex couples to wed.

A small collection of seats – Groom, Flynn and Hinkler in Queensland and Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce's base in New England – could oppose same-sex marriage if undecided voters opted for the status quo.

And that's pretty much it. Australians support same-sex marriage. So why are their "representatives" against it?

Bigotry and homophobia are a core part of Northern Irish Protestantism

At least, they are if you believe the Democratic Unionist Party, which today vetoed Stormont's passage of a marriage equality bill on the basis that it undermined protestant rights:

Northern Ireland’s assembly voted narrowly in favour of gay marriage equality but the largest party in the devolved parliament, the Democratic Unionists, have since vetoed any change in the law.

Four independent unionist assembly members joined nationalists and others with 53 votes in favour of same sex marriage – just one vote ahead of the main unionist parties who oppose any reform.

But the motion in the regional parliament fell after the DUP used a “petition of concern” to argue that the law change that would allow same-sex couples to marry in Northern Ireland did not command sufficient cross-community support.

Under the complex rules of power sharing in the region, parties from either the unionist or nationalist community can use this mechanism if they feel there is not enough backing from Protestants or Catholics for particular legislation. It was designed to ensure no one community dominated the other following the 1998 Belfast agreement.

So, we have a mechanism designed to protect minority rights, being used by bigots to suppress the rights of other minorities.

Northern Irish Protestants are surely better people than this, aren't they? And if they are, they really need to find a better party to represent them.

Progress in Chile

While Chile is still dragging its feet on marriage equality, it has just passed a law allowing civil unions:

Hundreds of same-sex couples in Chile will head to registry offices this week to celebrate civil unions, which will become legal for the first time in the country on Thursday.

Although the Catholic church is a powerful influence in the region, Latin America has been relatively quick to embrace the recognition of same-sex unions. Same-sex marriage has been legalized in recent years in Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and some parts of Mexico.

While its not full equality, its still a step forward. And hopefully, as in New Zealand, it will help lay the groundwork for full equality in the near future.

And that's that

Held: The Fourteenth Amendment requires a State to license a marriage between two people of the same sex and to recognize a marriage between two people of the same sex when their marriage was lawfully licensed and performed out-of-State.

That's the ruling of the US Supreme Court today on marriage equality. Its a great moment for freedom and human rights, and one we should all celebrate. And yet the ruling was only 5-4. Somehow, four of the US's most eminent jurists (well, three and Scalia, who is an unquestionable hack) talked themselves into thinking that the constitution doesn't mean what it clearly says it does, or that there's a secret "except for gays" clause in it or something. What the fuck is wrong with these people, and how the hell do they end up on the bench, let alone the US's highest court?

As for the bigots: you'll die, your hate and bigotry will die with you, and your kids will grow up in a different world, where the stuff you hate will be absolutely normal and unremarkable and people like you are regarded as sad fringe rednecks who live under rocks. And good riddance to you.