Same-sex marriage in South Africa

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Same-sex marriage
Performed nationwide in
Belgium (2003)
Canada (2005)
Netherlands (2001)
Spain (2005)
Performed statewide in
Massachusetts, USA (2004)
To be performed in
South Africa (by 2006)
Debate in other countries and regions
Aruba
Australia
China
Estonia
France
Ireland
Latvia
Lithuania
New Zealand
Portugal
Romania
United Kingdom
United States: CA NY WA
See also
Civil union
Registered partnership
Domestic partnership
Same-sex marriage timeline
Listings by country

In July 2002, the High Court of South Africa in Bloemfontein ruled that to deny same-sex couples the right to marry equally is discriminatory and thus unconstitutional. Certain benefits have since been extended to same-sex couples in South Africa.

This ruling has been met with mixed feelings and much opposition. Many South Africans are very conservative on social issues. Yet even under Apartheid, homosexuality was legal over a certain age limit. The oldest nightclub in Johannesburg, the Dungeon, (which ran for 30 years) was a mixed-race gay nightclub. The Dungeon operated legally through all the oppressive years of apartheid. Because homosexuals were accepted, it was easy for the government to write the legislation into the constitution. Bishop Desmond Tutu, who belongs to the Anglican Church in which same-sex marriage is at present a regionally divisive issue, is supportive of homosexuals having equal rights under law. Hume Maxwell started and ran the first gay-friendly mixed-race church in South Africa in the 1980s, and it is still meeting today. Margaret H. Marshall, chief justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court who wrote the majority report in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health guaranteeing same-sex marriage in Massachusetts was born and raised in South Africa.

On November 30, 2004, yet another court ruled in favour of same-sex marriage when the Supreme Court of Appeal of South Africa declared that under the Constitution, the common law concept of marriage must be changed to include partners of the same gender.Template:Ref

The case had been brought by Marie Fourie and Cecelia Bonthuys, a lesbian couple seeking the right to marry. In the ruling, Judge Edwin Cameron stated that the definition of marriage should be altered to read: "Marriage is the union of two persons to the exclusion of all others for life."

The government appealed the case again, and the case was heard in May 2005 by the Constitutional Court, the highest court in South Africa.Template:Ref

The court issued a ruling on the 1st of December 2005. It ruled that the exclusion of same-sex marriages in South African law "Represented a harsh if oblique statement by the law that same-sex couples are outsiders, and that their need for affirmation and protection of their intimate relations as human beings is somehow less than that of heterosexual couples."Template:Ref

It accordingly held that the common law definition of marriage was unconstitutional and gave the legislature one year to make changes.. Should this not happen, the words "or spouse" are to be read into the Marriage Act, thereby effectively paving the way for the legalisation of same-sex marriages in South Africa.Template:Ref

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