Scotland Joins the Equality Party

Are you happy to see me or is your sporran just full?

Scotland becomes the 17 nation to legalize marriage equality yesterday. By a vote of 105 to 18, its parliament approved same-sex marriage, to begin in October.

While there are a few Muslims there, the two major churches — the majority Church of Scotland (the Kirk) and the minority Scottish Catholic Church — made the usual weak and unsupportable arguments. In the debate though, the prevailing argument was that there were plenty of protections for religious sorts and no church or cleric would have to host or officiate in SSM. Anti-gay types know that's a red herring, but they can't seem to stop themselves from emotional indulgence.

Those unhappy types put forth a variety of unnecessary amendments, which failed. This law ended up slightly differing from many others in countries and U.S. states. It requires religious organizations who want to let their clergy perform SS ceremonies to first opt in to doing that.

England and Wales had previously approved SSM. Their citizens can marry under that as of March 29th.