South Africa Gets It
South Africa, a country still struggling to shed its legacy of discrimination, has taken a huge step toward ending marriage discrimination. The SA Parliament overwhelmingly voted for something akin to full and equal marriage rights. South Africa joins Belgium, Canada, the Netherlands, and Spain as countries that have equal access to marriage.
The new law offers something something slightly less than equality in that government officials can refuse to marry same-sex couples “on the basis of conscience”. This bigot’s loophole will be challenged in court, and under South Africa’s very progressive constitution, the error will hopefully be remedied quickly.
“We can’t be in the situation where civil officers can decide who they want to marry and who they don’t want to marry,” she said. “They aren’t able to refuse to marry a black person and a white person. This is unconstitutional.”
Congrats to South Africa! Let’s hope they finish the job soon!
November 15th, 2006 at 12:43 pm
Congrats to South Africa! Let’s hope they finish the job soon!
Are you talking about their ongoing gun confiscation here? Or their proposed Zimbabwe-style land grab? Or the not-so-veiled threat of ethnic cleansing of whites in certain regions?
Describing South Africa’s constitution as “progressive” when it ignores freedom of religion is a grotesque distortion of the word. Unless, of course, “progressive” means “Soviet-style freedom”.
It’s amazing how may so-called libertarians and human rights activists are still willing to give oppressive governments a pass if they support their pet cause, in this case gay rights.
November 15th, 2006 at 8:35 pm
Holly, how about we say progressive in some respects and leave it at that. Nobody can deny that SA has its problems. When I was there, I saw some of the most fucked up shit I never could have imagined. Marriage rights, though, is one area in which the ANC is doing a very good thing.