Other Regions

Outside of Europe and the Americas, countries that recognize homosexual unions are few and far between. The general trend has been that countries with these laws, or with substantial debates over their enactment, tend both to have liberal democratic polities and to be economically advanced. The regionally isolated cases demonstrate this tendency: South Africa, Israel, Australia, Argentina, and New Zealand all either have same-sex unions or seem headed rapidly in that direction. In Argentina, the city of Buenos Aires passed the first civil unions law in South America. In South Africa, the Supreme Court of Appeal ruled in December 2004 that same-sex marriages should be made legal, though the ruling did not itself legalize them. The government is expected to amend the marriage act soon, making it the first African country to establish gay marriage. This is not entirely unprecedented, since South Africa is the only country in the world that has a clause prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation written into its constitution. Yet despite gays’ favorable legal position, a strong majority of South Africans disapprove of homosexuality. This disconnect between the law and popular opinion is mostly a product of Nelson Mandela’s extremely liberal African National Congress having dominated post-apartheid politics for so long.

Of course, most countries in the world are still far from recognizing anything resembling gay marriage. In Iran, homosexuals are frequently and publicly executed. Homosexuality is also punishable by death in Sudan, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen. Islamic societies do not generally condone homosexuality, and it is met with jail terms in most predominantly Muslim countries. Notable exceptions to this include Turkey and Indonesia, where it is not criminalized but also not openly discussed. In East Asia, China and Japan have recently removed homosexuality from their lists of mental illnesses, a step which the United States took in the 1970s. East Asian societies are showing more tolerance towards homosexuals than in the past. Influential public figures in some of these countries have come out publicly in support of gay marriage, including the President of Taiwan and the King of Cambodia, who declared that he wanted gay marriage to be allowed in his country after seeing footage of gay San Francisco couples celebrating their weddings.

What Is Next?

Gay partnerships are not a purely recent phenomenon. Societies have struggled over how to deal with homosexuality since antiquity, and ancient civilizations throughout the world had forms of socially accepted homosexual partnerships. What is new is the form of the modern conflict over gay marriage. The dynamic of this struggle between progressive reformers and traditionalist opposition varies between societies, though there are some important commonalities between many countries that have enacted these laws. In many circumstances, gay marriage transitions from unthinkable to the established law in a very short span of time. It usually only becomes a protracted struggle in cases where regional sub-states differ over the laws. There is also usually vigorous and powerful opposition to the new laws, but their popularity rises substantially after a few years in existence. Few countries offer full marriage with equal rights in one fell swoop; most take a gradualist approach, extending only some partnership rights to gay couples at a time. While the debate is often dominated by the question of what to call same-sex partnersips, “marriage” or “unions,” what is really at stake is a set of legal benefits that affect couples’ access to immigration, adoption, pension, and inheritance rights.

The on-going debate in much of the world over legal recognition of gay partnerships seems to be the culmination of a gradual shift in societies’ attitudes toward homosexuality. In the West it has been transformed from a perversion or crime into a socially acceptable lifestyle. The conflict will likely not be permanently resolved for a long time, but it is now clear that homosexual partnerships will remain legal for the indefinite future in many countries, while in others they will be a politically salient issue for years to come.