Iceland is the only country in the world to have an openly gay head of state. Joanna Sigurdardottir became Prime Minister in 2009 and on Friday, they passed a law allowing same sex partners to get married in a vote which met with absolutely no political resistance. The vote was 49 to 0 to change the wording of marriage legislation to include matrimony between "man and man" and "woman and woman" in addition to a union between men and women. Gay marriage is not a big issue in Iceland, nor is it controversial.
Iceland's Protestant church has yet to decide whether to allow same sex marriage is church. The law says Ministers will always be free to perform gay marriage ceremonies, but never obliged to.
In America, churches are waging a bitter war against gay marriage but the protestant countries of Sweden, Norway and Denmark have all endorsed same sex marriage. It's the rest of the world that's having difficulty coming to terms with it, including Australia and the UK. The Netherlands was the first country to legalise gay marriage in 2001.
No comments:
Post a Comment