Countries Where Same Sex Marriage Is Officially Legal

Three weeks after a nationwide referendum determined that 62% of Australians supported marriage equality, Australia’s Parliament passed a bill that legalized same-sex marriage. Churches are not required to perform the marriages, but service industry workers such as florists and bakers will be in violation of anti-discrimination laws if they refuse service to same-sex couples.

From 2010, gay and lesbian couples in Austria could form civil partnerships, but a 2017 court decision ruled that civil partnerships were discriminatory. The court stated that if the country failed to pass legislation countering same-sex marriage, it would become legal January 1, 2019. The first same-sex marriage took place shortly after midnight that day.

A 2017 Constitutional Court decision declared that Taiwan’s marriage definition needed to be updated to include same-sex couples. The court gave the government until May 24, 2019 to change the law. On May 17, 2019 the legislature passed a bill legalizing same-sex marriage, making Taiwan the first country in Asia to do so.