https://www.reuters.com/article/us-japan-lgbt-marriage-ruling/in-landmark-ruling-japan-court-says-not-allowing-same-sex-marriage-is-unconstitutional-idUSKBN2B909X

Thought that this would be a good place to post this. It's awesome news! Slowly but surely they're getting there!

It's only been less than four years since marriage was (formally) opened to all orientations in Germany (though we did have legal life-partnerships since 2001). That change was long preceded by legal rulings (of our reasonably progressive constitutional/supreme court no less) that concluded that the institution of marriage would not be denigrated by opening it thusly.

Here's hoping that Japan's legislative branch eventually arrives at the same conclusion and just comes out and states the obvious.
And the nay-sayers arguing that only a marriage between a man and a woman (biologically speaking, obviously) can produce children are ignoring both the fact that far from all het marriages result in children as well as the fact that many same-sex couples want children and eventually end up raising them one way or another.

last edited at Mar 17, 2021 5:34PM

Definitely a cause for celebration, but since Zormau already started the trend of comparing Japan to our countries of residence, I might as well add my two cents.
The Japanese are once again ahead of Montenegro. Here, we just legalized civil unions last year, so we probably can't look forward to legalizing same-sex marriage for at least a decade or so. (After which, I assume we'll follow in the trend of western countries by having trans rights specifically become the most contentious civil rights conflict.)

Meanwhile we here just barely avoided going the exact opposite way...

Same. Here not only it's illegal. In order to change it, we'd need to change our constitution, so that's not going to happen anytime soon. We're not even honoring same-sex marriages taken outside. Not to mention stuff like trans rights etc. are light years away from being even considered a major issue in our government. If anything we're working hard on going back few steps.

last edited at Mar 17, 2021 6:45PM

reads what luinthoron and especially what Nevri said And here I thought we had it bad.

That’s awesome!

Continuing the off topic discussion...

Here in the UK we have the somewhat bizarre situation that both marriage and civil partnerships exist, and both can be entered into regardless of gender. So you even have the choice of getting married or almost-but-not-quite-married, depending on how you feel. Unfortunately, we do still have the utterly retarded rule that a civil ceremony (for either version) can't include any religious readings, symbols or music. (Widor's Toccata is fine, though.)

big pog

Great news! I hope it means there's more on the way very soon, though I'm not holding my breath for it.

If we're all talking about our own country's experiences with the legalization of same-sex marriage (or... lack of legality) I suppose I can tell the grand ole' tale of how my home state of California led the way to the legalization of same sex-marriage in the United States.

cue flashback

The year is 2008. The setting, California. "Proposition 8" is on the state ballot. It's a controversial little thing. It would amend the state constitution of California to bar same-sex marriage. Yes, California, possibly the most staunchly liberal of all 50 states in these great United States of America. How did it get there? Have we all lost our minds? Has the world gone mad?

No! It was put there by referendum!

You see, Once upon a time, some goober thought we Californians would benefit from some direct democracy! Anyone can get their stupid idea on the ballot if they can get enough signatures. Any of these stupid ideas can be made law by the vote of the public. You can even make amendments to the state constitution. As one would imagine, this has led to some slight issues over the years. But this story is not about those issues.

This story is about prop 8.

Proposition 8. Surely such a hateful bill would never pass in California? Well it did. Same-sex marriage would not be allowed in the state of California. But wait! We shall take this law to the courts! And to the courts we did go. And behold! Victory! Prop 8 has been overturned! No longer will the gays of California have to suffer under the thumb of Big Homophobia! All have been set free to promote the gay agenda!

Ah, but of course that's not the end of the story. Far from it. Because now the court's decision is being appealed. The supporters of prop 8 want a higher court to take a look at the decision. That's right, it's not over yet. Except it kind of is, because the decision is upheld. But, not content to take this L, the appeals go all the way to the highest court in the land, the United States Supreme Court!

The time has come. The final showdown. It's do or die...

...Honestly? The lawyers on the pro-prop 8 side flub the whole thing so badly I actually feel a little bad for them. The lawyers, not the prop 8 people. The prop 8 people can go fuck themselves.

The Supreme Court, the highest court in the land, has decided in favor of gay. And what's more, as a United States Supreme Court ruling, the decision applies to ALL of the United States, not just California. At last, our gays have been set free!

And that is the story of how California, by banning same-sex marriage, made same-sex marriage legal.

I swear to god. You can't make this shit up.

I am, of course, glossing over things quite a bit in the name of making a more entertaining post. Especially the legal stuff, which is a lot more complicated than what I've presented. I basically skipped over all the actual substance of the cases. What they were about, what the arguments and decisions and reasoning and all that were. Fun fact though! Justice Scalia of all people was one of the five that gave us the happy ending we got. I have no love for that guy, to say the least, but hey, I guess he did something right.

last edited at Mar 18, 2021 3:22AM

I just saw this and yay for Japan! While the U.S. here tries to reverse the Trump era homophobic and anti-LGBTQ+ executive orders and state laws setting us back from many of the advancements we made in the prior presidency and prior decades of protesting and fighting for rights. Now with the Republican legislatures feeling threatened of losing their power, they are passing draconian anti transgender state laws which will be difficult to reverse unless the majority of anti-LGBTQ+ legislators and their white-supremecists supporters get voted out of office or a less conservative slate of justices rule the Supreme Court. Now we are going to be playing catch-up with some of the other developed nations of the world.