Parliament says yes to marriage equality
In 2015, Greenland said yes to marriage equality without a single vote against. Then Denmark still had to agree.
On 26 May 2015, Greenland's parliament, the Inatsisartut in Nuuk, voted on marriage equality. The result was unambiguous: there was not a single vote against. The news from the Arctic came only a few days after the referendum in Ireland and was almost lost in it.
Yet Greenland had its own history. Since 1996, same-sex couples there had been able to enter a registered partnership, adopted from the Danish model. When Denmark opened marriage in 2012, the island did not automatically follow, because it regulates many legal matters itself. The first initiatives came as early as 2010. MP Justus Hansen of the Democrats moved the issue forward; for supporters, it was simply about equal conditions for all couples. The Church of Greenland also backed the plan, and Bishop Sofie Petersen expressly welcomed the change. According to observers, the bitter debates known from Paris or Washington were practically absent.
The decision was not the end of it, however. Because Greenland is part of the Kingdom of Denmark, the Folketing in Copenhagen also had to agree. The law was actually meant to apply from the autumn of 2015, but the Danish general election in the summer upset the timetable. The bill had to be reintroduced and was passed at the beginning of 2016 without a vote against.
On 1 April 2016 the time finally came. In the Hans Egede Church in Nuuk, Laila Mølgaard and Henriette Simonsen married, the country's first same-sex married couple. The old partnership was abolished, and existing couples could convert it into a marriage. Joint adoption followed in July 2016.
An island of around 57,000 inhabitants thus showed how calmly such a step can be taken.