2006 — South Africa Says I Do

On November 14, 2006, South Africa's National Assembly voted 230 to 41 to pass the Civil Union Bill, legalizing same-sex marriage. The vote came a year after the Constitutional Court ruled the ban a violation of the country's promise of equality for all. With that division in the Assembly, a principle written into the nation's founding promise was carried, at last, into the law of marriage itself, by a clear and counted majority of its elected representatives.

South Africa became the first African nation — and only the fifth country in the world — to open marriage to all couples. President Thabo Mbeki signed the bill into law on November 30, 2006.