Same-Sex Marriage

EDIT: I forgot to mention that I put the link for Million for Marriage in my links box. It's a website that has a petition that is trying to get a million signatures of people that support marriage equality in the US. It's really easy to sign the petition online, so if you support my wifey and I getting married, please sign it and let the world know how you feel!

Here's some information about the state of the world when it comes to same-sex marriage and civil unions:

It looks like South Africa has decided to allow same-sex marriages, which they will start doing within the next year. These countries also allow full-blown marriage to same-sex couples, as well as recognizing same-sex couples for the purposes of immigrating to them: Belgium, Canada, The Netherlands, and Spain. There are a few more countries that have nationwide policies that allow some of the benefits of marriage to same-sex couples, including the UK, Croatia, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Israel, Iceland, France, Norway, Portugal, Slovenia, Sweden, and Switzerland (this may be all of them, but I might have missed one). There are two more, Brazil and Australia, whose only nationwide policy about same-sex couples is recognizing them for the purposes of immigration. Everyone else, INCLUDING THE GODDAMN LAND OF THE FREE AND HOME OF THE BRAVE, doesn't have a nationwide policy on us.

Massachusetts is the only state in America that issues marriage certificates to same-sex couples. However, no other state recognizes these marriages- in other words, even if you get married in Mass., the rest of the country doesn't recognize that you're married. The states that have some sort of statewide benefits for same-sex couples, which aren't equal to marriage and don't provide all of the rights of marriage but at least provide SOME of them, are: Connecticut, Vermont, Hawaii, Maine, New Jersey, and California, as well as Washington DC.

The website for Arizona Together, the organization that I'm volunteering for whose sole purpose is to fight the "Protect Marriage" Amendment, says this: "The 18 states that currently have constitutional amendments defining marriage as between a man and a woman only are: Alaska, Arkansas, Georgia, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Texas and Utah.

All other states, except Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York and Rhode Island and the District of Columbia, have state laws that prohibit gay marriage."

Sorry this post is so dry and informational! At some point I'll try to put in more about the circumstances surrounding each state and country's decision to do what they're doing. For now I'll just say that I know that Spain and South Africa made their decisions on gay marriage very recently. Woo hoo! Yeah, we're getting there... this list does give me hope. Thanks, Anand and Ekta.