Should Same-Sex Marriage be legal?

It is easy to assume that in 2017 homophobia and opposition to same sex marriage is a thing of the past. After all, same-sex marriage was legalised in England, Scotland and Wales in 2014. It was then legalised in May 2015 in the Republic of Ireland through a popular referendum and across all 50 US states in the same year. While it seems like a huge amount of progress has been made for the LGBT community, the facts tell a different story and there are still many places across the world where it is illegal and perhaps even punishable by imprisonment or worse.

This opinion is in fact echoed across the world, in 2016 the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA) published its findings of a global survey surrounding people’s attitudes towards the idea of legalising same-sex marriage. The ILGA survey has been the largest of its kind ever conducted to date. The results revealed that 45% of people believe same-sex marriage should not be legal, 32% of respondents agreed it should be legal whilst the remainder did not know. These results are very telling and show that despite the perceived open-mindedness and acceptance of same-sex marriage, it still very much faces opposition worldwide. Further statistics from ILGA show that only 22 states show official recognition for same sex marriage.

"The results revealed that 45% of people believe same-sex marriage should not be legal"

There were some obvious countries showing hostility towards the concept such as Saudi Arabia and Iraq but there were some surprises thrown in with China having a somewhat lukewarm level of rejection to the proposal. There were 30% against, 31% in favour and the rest not knowing. Another surprise was the large difference between Ireland’s 64% in favour against the UK’s 48% in favour of same sex marriage.

The LGBT community’s struggle for marriage equality is slowly but surely paying off and it does appear that more and more of the population are accepting of it and even embrace it, there is still a stigma and an intolerance attached to the concept and campaigners have very long way to go.