Gay Marriage Legal Nationwide In 10 Countries Around The World

It's been just over ten years since the first modern-day country legalized gay marriage, and since then only nine more across the globe have allowed lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) couples to wed nationally.

On Wednesday, President Obama voiced his support for same-sex marriage. Six states perform same-sex marriages in the United States, however the nation itself does not recognize it.

Several other countries afford some rights or protections in the form of civil unions or registered partnerships, including Denmark, the UK, and Brazil.

Can you guess which countries have fully legalized gay marriage? Find out in the slideshow below.

Loading Slideshow

• Netherlands

  The Netherlands was the first country to recognize gay marriage in <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/4081999.stm" target="_hplink">2001</a>. <em>Pictured: Jan van Breda and Thijs Timmermans.</em>

• Belgium

  Belgium legalized same-sex marriages in <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/4081999.stm" target="_hplink">2003. </a> <em>Pictured: Marion Huibrecht and Christel Verswyvelen.</em>

• Spain

  Spain legalized gay marriage in <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/4081999.stm" target="_hplink">2005</a>.

• Canada

  Canada followed Spain and approved gay marriage in <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-10650267" target="_hplink">2005. </a>

• South Africa

  South Africa legalized same sex marriage in <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-10650267" target="_hplink">2006.</a> <em>Pictured: Vernon Gibbs and Tony Hall. </em>

• Norway

  Norway followed suit in <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-10650267" target="_hplink">2009.</a> <em>Norwegian finance minister and chairwoman of the Socialist Left party Kristin Halvorsen (L) stands next to wedding figurines outside the House of Parliament in Oslo on June 11, 2008, where she celebrated the passing of a new law awarding equal rights to same sex partnerships as those enjoyed by heterosexual marriages. (Getty)</em>

• Sweden

  Sweden recognized same sex marriage in <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-10650267" target="_hplink">2009.</a> <em>Pictured: Johan Lundqvist (L) and Alf Karlsson. </em>

• Portugal

  Portugal recognized gay marriage in <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-10650267" target="_hplink">2010.</a> <em>Pictured: Teresa Pires and Helena Paixao. </em>

• Iceland

  Iceland legalized gay marriage in <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-10650267" target="_hplink">2010.</a>

• Argentina

  Argentina legalized same sex-marriage in <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/4081999.stm" target="_hplink">2010.</a> It was the only Latin American country to do so. <em>Pictured: Giorgio Nocentino (L) and Jaime Zapata.</em>

• New Zealand

  New Zealand<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/17/maurice-williamson-new-zealand-gay-marriage-_n_3100714.html?utm_hp_ref=gay-voices" target="_blank"> became the first</a> Asia-Pacific nation (and the 13th in the world) to legalize same-sex marriage. <em>Pictured: Jills Angus Burney (L) and Deborah Hambly.</em>

• Denmark

  Denmark became the first country to allow the registration of gay partnerships in 1989. In 2012, Denmark's <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/07/denmark-approves-gay-wedd_0_n_1577288.html" target="_blank">Parliament approved </a>a law allowing same-sex couples to get married in formal church weddings instead of the short blessing ceremonies that the state's Lutheran Church offered.

• Uruguay

  The Uruguay Parliament lawmakers passed the <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/10/uruguay-legalizes-gay-marriage_n_3057458.html" target="_blank">"marriage equality project"</a> in Montevideo, Uruguay,Wednesday, April 10, 2013.

• The United States Of America

  Same-sex marriage is allowed in nine <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/07/maryland-question-6-results-2012_n_2050830.html" target="_blank">U.S. states</a>, and Washington DC.

• Brazil

  Some <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/26/brazils-top-appeals-court-upholds-gay-marriage_n_1032481.html" target="_blank">parts of Brazil</a> allow same-sex marriage (AL, BA, CE, DF, ES, MS, PR, PI, SE, and SP).

• Mexico

  Some areas of Mexico allow gay marriage, such <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/06/mexico-gay-marriage-law-unconstitutional-_n_2249701.html" target="_blank">as Mexico City</a>.

• France

  France legalized same sex marriage in <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/23/france-gay-marriage-law-_n_3139470.html?utm_hp_ref=world&ir=World&utm_hp_ref=world" target="_hplink">2013</a>. Pictures: an illustration made with plastic figurines of men is seen in front of the Palais Bourbon, the seat of the French National Assembly. (JOEL SAGET/Getty Images)

Comments

[dbims]

02:24 PM on 03/22/2013

So what's next? Beastieality? Pedophilia? They are all the same!

[Elcidd]

06:41 AM on 03/15/2013

Not in the top ten, but we can say we were "fashionably gay late."

[Elcidd]

06:40 AM on 03/15/2013

Coming this June the 11th nation: United States of America!

[Kibblet]

03:16 AM on 11/19/2012

I hate slideshows.

[CAMBEL]

12:04 PM on 05/14/2012

Many of these countries area also in the top ten list of countries with the happiest populations. Meanwhile, if you look at the list of most unhappy states you have places like Mississippi, West Va. etc....

Apparently bigotry etc... doesn't make you happy.

[awritermsw]

11:42 AM on 05/14/2012

http://charliebigfeet.blogspot.com/2012/05/are-159-901-830-married-couple-wrong.html?m=1

[Opus Fideo]

10:07 AM on 05/14/2012

If god hadn't wanted gays he wouldn't have created them. If he hadnt wanted atheists he wouldn't have created them either. Catch my drift?

[HonestHans]

07:23 AM on 05/14/2012

Maybe we should start throwing bananas at fascists associated with the tea party and fox to let them know what they have already turned the USA into. Then again, they may shoot us for daring to protest their fascist anti gay agenda, sort of like the banana republics fox and the tea party so admire.

[SteveMD2]

03:51 AM on 05/21/2012

if you dig in the itnernet you'll find that fox news predecessor, fox films , did propaganda films for the nazis in the 1930s.

As chris Hedges said in the prelude to his book "American fascists - the christian right and the war on America, We're beging to look like Germany in the mid 1920s.

and then there is the german born pope who in 2009 UNexcommunicated a bishop who denies / minimizes the holocaust.

http://articles.cnn.com/2009-01-26/world/pope.holocaust.denial_1_bishop-richard-williamson-bishop-bernard-fellay-holocaust-denier?_s=PM:WORLD

[dex216]

09:33 PM on 05/13/2012

To all the people who don't agree with same-sex marriage, I say this: Don't marry someone of the same sex. There. Problem solved

[Opus Fideo]

10:04 AM on 05/14/2012

Lol true true

[dex216]

06:34 PM on 05/13/2012

If consenting adults wish to get married, they should be allowed to do so. No government should restrict their rights

[MarkBoston]

12:53 PM on 05/13/2012

notice that America is no longer Leading The World in anything anymore these days .... except perhaps war.

[SteveMD2]

03:52 AM on 05/21/2012

and bigotry like that of the Islamic states

[Heidi Brightly]

02:13 PM on 03/29/2013

Based on what? Why are people still flocking to America? For the freebes?

America is the leading laughing stock of the world-

[oil patch]

12:06 PM on 05/13/2012

PLEASE STOP THE SLIDESHOWS

[Galician]

10:14 AM on 05/12/2012

Please, stop mentioning religion when it's just a matter of equal civil rights!!

Spain can have a lot of Catholics living in it, but our politicians don't name God in their speechs, because they perfectly know that that could mean scaring us to death and going hundreds of years backwards therefore that would lead them to an electoral defeat.

Gay marriage is nothing more that a must!!

[cwebster]

05:32 PM on 05/12/2012

Exactly. Marriage is nothing more than civil rights issue, and it is very un-civil to deny people access to marriage for no rational or intelligent reason.

[MarkBoston]

01:01 PM on 05/13/2012

You NEVER hear of the KKK in America anymore... Thats because they have re-branded themselves as the sexier " evangelical christians" They hide their bigotry and fascism behind religion because "religion" in America is a free pass to ALL THINGS ..and somehow it gives them some sense of respect from Other christians ... even if they don't agree with their positions .... they are seen as being in the same club

[Eugene Pool]

08:43 PM on 05/11/2012

It's very ironic that Catholic countries like Spain and Portugal and a place with a set state religion that is opposed to gay marriage like Canada allow same sex marriges and America, a coutnry founded on seccular rationalism and personal liberty, uses the government to pass bonus laws to make it extra illegal.

How di dAMerica wind up with the Bible thumpers and we wound up with the practical progresives? Looking at it fro ma historical foundign view I'd ahv thougth it'd hav egoen the exact opposite way.

[Galician]

10:00 AM on 05/12/2012

Spain has a Catholic tradition but it's also a secular nation (I recommend you to read our Constitution). In Portugal the separation of religion and government is even bigger!!

[Jay Lewis]

11:20 AM on 05/12/2012

How did America wind up with the Bible thumpers?

Bible thumpers are the only brand of Christian out there who fits well with the agendas of capitalism.

Over the years, capitalists and eventually corporatists could always count upon (with lucre lavishing) thumpers to confound logic enough to convince the masses that capitialism was no threat to honest Christian dogma. That is why today we have thumpers pretending that when Jesus arrives for His second act, he will be a hands-down, bigoted Republican.

Thumpers' main strategic agenda is to confound the rational, and their main tactical strategy is to use uber-emotional goosing to first get their minds right.

Long before Fox and Limbaugh, thumpers were employing the same incindiary, emotionally-based prodding to steer the masses into consumer corrals where clear thinking was clouded by being subjected to fear-mongering and then resultant hate-mongering (if you disagree with our absolutism, Satan has control of your mind, or "You're either with us or against us", etc).

The only other countries that have thumpers are those to whom America has sent thumpers, otherwise known as 'missionaries.'

The church with the most missionaries is the Mormon Church, and when you understand the Mormon Church's missionary program, you understand proselytized corporatism. Of all the religions in America, main stream media has occasionally noted that financial transactions made by the Mormon Church are stream-lined, largely flawless and quickly sealed.

[endlessbliss313]

03:01 PM on 05/11/2012

funny how they are all (excepting s africa which of course was run by europeans until 20 years ago) are 'white' advanced nations

wonder what the nazis and kkk say about this ---yes i brought "race " into this

are we to assume that the dusky "races" are backwards because of this??

[Roelvdwegen]

06:00 PM on 05/11/2012

I must protest, the Netherlands (Where i am originally from) is about as best an example of a multicultural society as possible.

[Galician]

10:02 AM on 05/12/2012

I completely agree!

[MarkBoston]

01:13 PM on 05/13/2012

so much so , I understand it's loosing it's own culture in the process ...

[Eugene Pool]

08:46 PM on 05/11/2012

Races, no, cultural, yes.
The 'duskies' in my country are as open to gay marrige as any European desendent and I'm sure that whites down in the southern American states are not open to it despite our ethnic simillarities.