Geography of Same Sex Marriage Around The World

   

This graphic published at The Economist very clearly shows how advanced same sex marriage and Civil Unions are. On the other hand it also shows where the work needs to be done.  The work is being done world wide because you have LGBT people in every country and jurisdiction. What you don’t have in countries that still live by standards from the last centuries is freedom to have a fair in information exchange so people that are straight or gay closeted by homophobia can learn what a gay person is.  In this country, the U.S. most of the times with exceptions of murder or beatings, is a matter of someone writing ‘gay’ on your front door while you sleep or have an egg thrown at you while you walk to the grocery store but the opposition in these places is much more dark and dangerous than that. 

Wether we talk about countries not far from un like in the Bahamas, Jamaica, the French and British Islands or as far as Brunei in Africa or Belarus in East Europe you can be jailed without trial in many cases and executed with a short trial in others.  Even on nations that have shown in the past to be the first ones to be highly educated like Egypt, Greece and Persia (now Iran), Gays can be hung, shot , have their head cut off or stoned to death without much remorse. It’s fair to say that where education and information flows, it shows what type of people gays are.  It’s worked well to show gays as neighbors, friends, daughters and sons. 

The freedom to pick the person you love of lawful age is something so rewarding to see; like a beautiful plant in a well soil garden it keeps growing so that as this type of individual comes of age and realizes who they have feelings for they can more easily be able to survive school and if they decide to make it legal union just like anyone else’s they can.

Between nations in which you have gay marriage such as Britain and New Zealand, weddings have become as natural as anything else they do but you still have nations like the United States that preaches fairness, democracy and individuality in we still do not have the Federal Government    sanctioning these marriages and instead we are doing them piece meal hopping for the moment in which the Supreme Court decides to jump in and put a stamp on such a law and have the matter settled for all. 

This moment is not too far away since you have plenty of states’ Attorney generals and lower and federal appeals courts asking the Supreme Court to get involved. Watchers of the court believe that gay marriage will be one of the first cases they will take up at the beginning of their new term at the end of September and will have a decision announced in the middle of their term which would be early 2015. Again these are just presuppositions but based on history and good current information of tea leaf reading, it sounds about right.

The biggest problem in the United States it seems to unsurprisingly come from the South, just like slavery, interracial marriage and civil laws of the 60’s received the most resistance there. Outside of these States it seems to be Russia even more so than China which is causing a lot of human hurt. Russia is the only large nations that outright is made a law against gays. There is been no hangings or firing squads as far as we know but it makes it very hard for anyone gay to come out because they will be putting their livelihood on the line and probably a good bet that a beating plus jail will await them.

 Right now you have cases in Russia in which a hater beats up a person he believes is gay and as the police arrive, or the person makes a complaint it will be the person beaten that will got to jail. If that is not street justice in a nation that claims to be civilized I don’t know what street justice is. Hopefully as information leaks there by the internet and may be visitors the people themselves would realize that having the government put their son in jail because of they way they have seen him grow up might not be the best parenting possible. We are waiting for those fathers to start softening their hearts for their sons and daughters difference of sexual orientation.

Information is like a light that shows the faults and imperfections for those that care to work to fix them. Information alone wont do it, you need the people to care and have a heart to make changes. This will show to the world and generations to come for once and for all what type of people the Russians people really are. Are they heartless ignorant bears that refuse to learn and believe in science and currents events happening in their country now, not 60 years ago.

For a country that fought fascism in Hitler (even though they were in bed with him at the beginning), they sometimes seem to follow the same path, just with different uniforms.

The Map above covers up to April of 2013. From a year and a half ago there have been more drastic changes in favor of same sex marriage.  Just friday an appeals court overruled the Governor of Arizona and allowed a dead gay vet to be be given same sex marriage discharge so his spouse can get the government benefits that spouses of vets get including being buried with them. 

Adam Gonzalez, publisher