Agency Report
With Chilean lawmakers approving a same-sex marriage bill Tuesday, we look at the situation across the globe.
While the right to marry has been legalised in 30 countries, homosexuality remains banned in many parts of the world.
– Europe, gay marriage pioneers –
On October 1, 1989, for the first time in the world, several gay couples in Denmark tied the knot in civil unions, which while giving their relationships a legal standing fell short of full marriage.
It was the Netherlands that first allowed gay marriages, giving more rights in April 2001.
Since then 16 European countries have followed suit in accepting gay marriages: Austria, Belgium, Britain, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Luxembourg, Malta, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and most recently Switzerland.
Other European countries allow only weaker civil partnerships for the LGBTQ community — including Croatia, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Italy and Slovenia, which rejected gay marriages in a 2015 referendum.
The Czech government has backed draft legislation that would make the country the first post-communist member of the European Union to legalise same-sex marriage, but its fate is uncertain.
In Romania a referendum aimed at enshrining a ban on gay marriage in the constitution failed in 2018 because of a low turnout.
