JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (ABP) — South Africa's highest court said Dec. 1 that the nation's constitution requires it to legalize same-sex marriage.
The Constitutional Court delayed its ruling for a year to give Parliament time to rewrite the nation's 1961 marriage law to include gay couples. If legislators refuse to act within that time period, the decision will automatically take effect.
When it does so, South Africa will become only the fifth country to grant nationwide legal status to gay matrimony, and the first on the African continent.
The court was unanimous in saying the nation's post-apartheid 1996 constitution gives gays an equal right to marriage and its attendant benefits and responsibilities. The charter explicitly bans discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.
South Africa will join Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain and Canada as the only countries to recognize gay marriage nationwide. The commonwealth of Massachusetts is the only jurisdiction in the United States with legal gay marriage. Other states and European nations offer marriage-like status to gay couples through civil unions or domestic partnerships.
The decision affirmed a lower court's 2004 ruling that required the government to recognize the marriage of two Pretoria women. According to the Washington Post, Cecelia Bonthuys and Marie Fourie wed in a church pastored by Andre Muller, who was forced out of the nation's Dutch Reformed denomination because of his homosexuality.
“In the past, gay people have always been ridiculed, belittled,” Muller told the newspaper. “Now that this ruling has come, they are on an equal footing. Justice has been done.”
But the nation's Council of Muslim Theologians condemned the ruling in a Dec. 2 statement. “Same-sex marriages are a violation of the limits prescribed by the Almighty, a reversal of the natural order, a moral disorder and a crime against humanity,” the release said.
There is little indication that politicians will attempt to amend the South African Constitution to block legalized gay marriage. Only one small political party — the African Christian Democratic Party — has announced support for such an amendment, according to the New York Times.
Ray McCauley, pastor of the evangelical Rhema Church in Randburg, said most South Africans opposed the decision, according to the South African Press Association. “It is a sad day for South Africa when the very bedrock foundation of society, the family, is redefined by a court,” McCauley said.
But Anglican Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane of Cape Town said the court's decision should be obeyed in the civil realm, even though his denomination opposes gay marriage in the theological realm.
“This ruling does not compel any religious denomination or minister of religion to approve or perform same-sex marriages, therefore it should not cause alarm,” Ndungane said, according to the press association. “It would be arrogant and presumptuous of us to attempt to force our values and viewpoints on people who think differently from us. We would wish to value diversity in the way demonstrated today by the Constitutional Court.”