South African Parliament OKs Gay Marriages
The Associated Press
Tuesday 14 November 2006
Cape Town, South Africa - The South African parliament on Tuesday
approved new legislation recognizing gay marriages - a first for a
continent where homosexuality is largely taboo.
The National Assembly passed the Civil Union Bill, worked out
after months of heated public discussion, by a majority of 230 to 41
votes despite criticism from both traditionalists and gay activists
and warnings that it might be unconstitutional. There were three
abstentions.
The bill provides for the "voluntary union of two persons, which
is solemnized and registered by either a marriage or civil union." It
does not specify whether they are heterosexual or homosexual
partnerships.
But it also says marriage officers need not perform a ceremony
between same-sex couples if doing so would conflict with his or her
"conscience, religion and belief."
"When we attained our democracy, we sought to distinguish
ourselves from an unjust painful past, by declaring that never again
shall it be that any South African will be discriminated against on
the basis of color, creed culture and sex," Home Affairs Minister
Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula told the National Assembly.
The bill had been expected to pass given the overwhelming
majority of the ruling African National Congress, despite unease
among rank and file lawmakers. It now has to go to the National
Council of Provinces, which is expected to be a formality, before
being signed into law by President Thabo Mbeki.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/111406U.shtml
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