The Althingi parliament voted 49 to zero to change the wording of marriage legislation to include matrimony between “man and man, woman and woman,” in addition to unions between men and women.
Iceland, a socially tolerant island nation of about 320,000 people, became the first country to elect an openly gay head of state in 2009 when Social Democrat Johanna Sigurdardottir became prime minister after being nominated by her party.
“The attitude in Iceland is fairly pragmatic,” said Gunnar Helgi Kristinsson, a political scientist at the University of Iceland. “It (gay marriage) has not been a big issue in national politics — it’s not been controversial.”
Althingi members welcomed the move after the vote, saying it was a great day for everybody everywhere involved in the struggle for gay rights and human rights generally.
The bill will go to the President for ratification; but that is a formality as the Icelandic President has only twice sent a bill to public referendum in the history of the Republic of Icelandic.
Also, public opinion polls suggest the marriage bill is extremely popular.
3 comments:
Um, this story is old. Like June 2010 old.
It is Rayne, but it's good to remind people in the US (where I live) that other countries are far ahead of us in gay rights and that there is hope at the end of a long day.
Perhaps. Probably dating it, though, would remind us that other countries have *been* far ahead of us in this regard for an increasingly-long while, and have not become what Abrahamists have so predicted, failingly and arrogantly predicted and presumed.
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