By John Mack Freeman
The legislature of the semi-autonomous state of Greenland within Denmark voted unanimously this week to extend full marriage recognition to same-sex couples. The 27-0 vote is a culmination of a campaign to bring same-sex marriage to the island nation that began in 2010. Via the Washington Blade:
“It was a massive day yesterday,” Justus Hansen, a spokesperson for Demokraterne, a political party that first proposed Greenland’s same-sex marriage bill, told the Copenhagen Post, a Danish newspaper, on Wednesday. “Being gay is not something they’ve chosen for themselves, and it’s an acceptance we need here in Greenland and in the rest of the world.”
Gay U.S. Ambassador to Denmark Rufus Gifford on his social media pages described the passage of the same-sex marriage bill as “fantastic news.”
Denmark in 1989 became the first country to legally recognize gay and lesbian relationships, but it did not extend full marriage rights to same-sex couples until 2012.
