INTERNATIONAL NEWS: Australians wait to hear same-sex marriage poll result

INFOGRAPHIC: Australians will find out on Wednesday morning what the results of the postal vote are

November 14, 2017

Tshego Mphahlele 2 minutes read

Australians are expected to know the result of the same-sex postal vote on Wednesday.

The Australian marriage law postal survey was held between 12 September and 7 November.

This, unlike electoral voting, was entirely voluntary. This has seen divisions in the country with “vote yes” and “vote no” groups coming into existence.

Should Australians vote yes, it would make it the 25th country in the world to legalise same-sex marriages.

The Netherlands became the first country in the world to legalise same-sex marriages in 2001.

Australians are expected to find out the results on Wednesday at 10:00, (01:00 local time).

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Will South Africans wake up to an Australia that voted yes or no? Only time will tell.

Trivia

– Only 24 countries in the world recognise same-sex marriages. They are Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Luxembourg, Malta, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, the United States and Uruguay.

– Same-sex marital practices and rituals were more recognised in Mesopotamia than in ancient Egypt. The Almanac of Incantations contained prayers favouring on an equal basis the love of a man for a woman and of a man for a man.

– The first Roman emperor to have married a man was Nero, who is reported to have married two other men on different occasions.

– On 20 July 2005, Canada became the fourth country in the world and the first country in the Americas to legalise same-sex marriage nationwide with the enactment of the civil marriage act which provided a gender-neutral marriage definition.

– The earliest use of the phrase “commitment ceremony” as an alternative term for “gay wedding” appears to be by Bill Woods who, in 1990, tried to organise a mass “commitment ceremony” for Hawaii’s first gay pride parade.

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– In September 2016, almost a decade after same-sex marriage was legalised in South Africa, the department of home affairs released a list of marriage offices across the country that are willing to solemnise same-sex marriages.

According to the list, of the 409 marriage offices, only 117 (or 28.6 percent) were willing to do so.

In Gauteng, 17 out of 57 offices said they would conduct same-sex marriages, 10 out of 59 in the Eastern Cape, 5 out of 28 in the Free State, 10 out of 58 in Mpumalanga, 16 out of 61 in Limpopo, 10 out of 34 in the Western Cape, 9 out of 22 in the Northern Cape, 29 out of 68 in KwaZulu-Natal and 10 out of 22 in North West.