Attitudes towards same-sex marriage have changed markedly in the past decade ©Getty

The wedding march

By Matthew Garrahan

Attitudes towards same-sex marriage have changed markedly in the past decade ©Getty

State of the union: 20 per cent of Americans live in a state where gay marriage is legal

A hush fell over the room at the Founders’ Forum in Los Angeles this week ahead of David Cameron’s appearance via video-link from London. The British prime minister was supposed to attend in person to bang the drum for the British media and technology sector in front of a select audience of Hollywood executives and Silicon Valley technology funds, all looking for the next big investment opportunity.

Circumstances forced him to postpone his appearance. “I’m sorry I can’t be with you,” he said, once the link went live from London and he appeared on a big screen, a picture of 10 Downing Street behind him. “But I’m legislating to allow gay marriage and we’re voting on it in 20 minutes.”

There was an immediate and sustained burst of applause from the crowd in the room, which augured well for Mr Cameron. The parliamentary vote was passed later that evening with a large majority when MPs voted 400 to 175 to give a same-sex marriage bill a second reading, ensuring it continues on a path to becoming law.

The vote puts Britain on course to join a fast-growing club of countries that have signed new legislation allowing gay people to marry. A movement that started in the Netherlands in 2001 has quickly gone global: Belgium, Spain, Canada, South Africa, Norway, Sweden, Portugal, Iceland and Argentina have all legalised same-sex marriage. It is legal in Mexico City – although not in the rest of that country – while at least 20 other countries, including Australia and the UK, have ratified civil partnerships.

Momentum is building in France, where François Hollande promised to legalise gay marriage in last year’s presidential campaign, while in the US, President Barack Obama spoke out in favour of same-sex marriage ahead of the 2012 election. Nine US states and the District of Columbia allow it. Maine, Maryland and Washington legalised it in November while an attempt to pass an anti-gay marriage law was defeated in Minnesota. “This is an issue that was considered controversial just a couple of years ago,” says Gregory Angelo, interim executive director of the Log Cabin Republicans, a gay and lesbian Republican group. “But 20 per cent of the US population now lives in a state where same-sex marriage is legal.”

Research shows a significant shift in attitudes. In 2001, roughly two-thirds of Americans opposed same-sex marriage but over the past decade support has swung in the other direction. The legalisation of gay marriage is now supported by 48 per cent of Americans while 43 per cent oppose it, according to a report by The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.

The pace of change has alarmed social conservatives in the US and beyond. There have been street protests in France by groups opposing gay marriage: hundreds of thousands demonstrated in Paris last month against a bill backed by Mr Hollande. The following week an estimated 125,000 supporters of same-sex marriage took to the streets. In the UK, more than half of Conservative MPs did not back the party’s leadership in this week’s vote, despite the enthusiasm of Mr Cameron. Sir Roger Gale, a Tory MP, said the push to legalise gay marriage was “Orwellian” and sparked a furore when he suggested the government abandon the push to legalise gay marriage and instead allow “civil unions” between anyone, including members of the same family.

Such a softening of attitude is far from universal. Poland’s parliament has rejected laws that would have given limited legal rights to gay couples, splitting the ruling party. Russia’s parliament overwhelmingly approved a bill to ban so-called homosexual propaganda, illustrating the divisions between attitudes in eastern and western Europe.

The Russian legislation would allow authorities to fine individuals up to Rbs5,000 ($166) for “promoting homosexuality to minors”, an act that could encompass anything from attending a gay pride parade to handing out gay rights literature.

Attention was focused on Africa when David Kato, a gay activist in Uganda, was murdered in 2011 while in South Africa there is a scourge of “corrective rape” of lesbians.

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Yet gay marriage opponents have failed to stop the progress of a movement that continues to gain traction around the world. A younger generation that has grown up with “out” gay people as friends, relatives and colleagues, and that watches films and television shows portraying gay people in a positive light, has little objection to marriage equality. The waning influence of religion in public life has also been an important factor, says Lee Badgett, a professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the author of When Gay People Get Married. “You tend to see [gay marriage] legalised in countries where people don’t go to church that frequently and where they aren’t as tied to religious perspectives,” she says.

The increasing numbers of cohabiting heterosexual couples and the legal protections created for them has established a framework for same-sex relationships and made them more publicly acceptable, she adds. “In some of these countries that has been the first step.”

For Mr Angelo, there is a more simple explanation. “People are seeing their gay friends and colleagues engage in same-sex partnerships and the sky is not falling in.”

Gay advocacy groups are hailing the British parliamentary vote as a watershed moment because it is the first time gay marriage has been backed by a government that is not left-leaning. “It’s been incredibly encouraging for us and fellow conservatives to see David Cameron championing this issue,” says Mr Angelo. “In many ways, the UK has taken the lead.”

A majority of Conservative MPs may have voted against same-sex marriage but the number that backed the measure this week was still sharply up on 2004, when parliament voted to legalise civil partnerships. “We got 20 Conservative votes for civil partnerships [in 2004],” says Ben Summerskill, chief executive of Stonewall, the gay equality charity. About 130 of 303 Conservative MPs voted this week in favour of same-sex marriage. “So the number of Tories prepared to support the issue has gone up by a factor of six in a decade,” he says.

Winning over a party that has traditionally been right of centre was crucial, and the result of careful lobbying by Stonewall and other groups, he says. He also points to Mr Obama’s election victory, when a disparate coalition made up of the young, immigrants, minorities – and the gay community – powered the president to a second term. “The more thoughtful Conservative MPs [in Britain], who have reflected on the result of the US election, are starting to think that part of their response isn’t just the stewardship of their party to 2015. It’s the stewardship of their party to 2050.”

This means trying to win the support of UK gay voters and their friends, he adds. “If politicians on the right twitch every time anyone mentions homosexuality, everyone under 40 will look at them as though they are a bit odd – whether they are gay or not.”

With so many Conservative MPs voting against same-sex marriage, the vote has exposed a deep fissure in the party. Right-leaning politicians in the US are as divided as they are across the Atlantic but, like the UK, the pendulum seems to be swinging towards marriage equality.

Several deep-pocketed Republican donors are trying to speed up that shift. Before November’s election one group poured money into campaigns to win same-sex marriage ballots in several states. The group included Dan Loeb, the hedge fund billionaire who recently doubled his firm’s money in a $500m bet on Greek government bonds, and Paul Singer, another billionaire who is one of the Republican party’s biggest donors.

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For all the individual campaigning and ballots in individual states, the US Supreme Court could ultimately remove the hurdle to the broad adoption of same-sex marriage at a national level. The court will next month hear two cases on consecutive days that could reshape the legislative landscape for gay people.

The first is a hearing on the legality of Proposition 8, the 2010 California ballot proposition that limited the definition of marriage in America’s most populous state to a union between a man and a woman. The second, a formal challenge to the Defence of Marriage Act, will ensure married gay couples will have equal recognition – and access to the same benefits – as married heterosexual couples.

Gay rights advocates around the world will be watching carefully for the court’s rulings. But while this week’s British vote has given them cause for optimism, some are urging caution. “There are a number of countries in southeast Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and much of the Middle East where morality laws seem to flourish,” says Roberta Sklar, a spokesperson for the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission.

These regions can be openly hostile to gay people who often have to hide their sexuality or live in fear, she says. A recent attempt to register a gay organisation in Belarus provoked a raid by police while “prohibition of homosexual propaganda” legislation has been passed in Ukraine. “Equality in some parts of the world is beginning to gain traction but in other parts it really isn’t,” she says. “The right to marry is only one of the important pillars of full equality for everyone, everywhere.”

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