Next countries to legalize Gay Marriage? (after Colombia)

[Tender Branson]

I've recently read some article that many East-Asians (Chinese, Taiwanese, Koreans and Japanese) have a strong fetish for Nazi symbols and clothes, even though they are not really Nazis themselves.

This is really weird.

Anyway, what are the polls like in Taiwan on the issue of gay marriage ? And if you happen to know, in China ? I always figured support for it might not be that bad in Taiwan, but I have no clue about China (don't even know if the "opinion" "polls" there are even legitimate) ...

[Tender Branson]

As for the progress of gay marriage in Austria:

Currently, we still have civil unions with full adoption laws.

But just recently, parliament amended the civil union law to equalize gay couples by another 2 points.

That means civil unions and hetero marriage now differ by about 15 points anymore instead of some 50 a few years ago. (Some experts even say that among some points, gay couples actually have the better* - or, more modern - law than heterosexuals).

It's entirely possible that in a few years, gay couples will have all the same rights as hetero couples who are getting married - just that the law is still called "registered partnership" and not "marriage".

For an actual equalisation and merger of the 2 laws (the hetero one and the homosexual one), it would probably need an SPÖ-Greens-NEOS coalition (which is very unlikely to ever happen).

ÖVP and FPÖ will continue to block any full equality.

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*"better" - that is because the Austrian Marriage Law is from 1938 (right after the Anschluss to Nazi-Germany). After the War, all the Nazi-language regarding marriage and family was removed of course and it was amended and updated further in the 1970s in favour of women's rights.

Still the law is quite outdated and the new - homosexual - civil union law is better in many aspects considering today's patchwork families, work-related issues, etc.

[Tender Branson]

First Tier (pretty likely within the next one or two years, or otherwise "inevitable"):

Rest of Mexico, Taiwan, Australia, Switzerland, Costa Rica, Faroe Islands,

Second Tier (by 2020, I'd be surprised if the dominos hadn't fallen)

Greece, Italy, N. Ireland, Austria, Germany, Nepal, Malta, Costa Rica, Estonia

Third Tier: Wild-cards

Japan, S. Korea, Albania, Thailand, Israel (civil marriage would have to be enacted first), Vietnam, Ecuador, Venezuela, Chile (!), Bolivia (would have to be done via constitution though, so rather unlikely), Ecuador (same), Rest of EU, Cuba

Why Switzerland?

70% support according to a recent poll

Even UDC and PDC voters are in favour by wide margins.

I'm not aware that anyone is gathering signatures for a referendum though, so unlikely that it happens in the the next year or two.

Same here.

There's no new poll because the issue is rather non-important for Austrians, but some polls from 2014/2015 found 73-74% in favour (Market poll for example).

[Tender Branson]

You can't expect a government that has any of the Homophobic Triangle of Shas, Torah Judaism and Jewish Home to be a friend to the lgbt community.

I don't expect anything else. In fact, I don't expect SSM to ever pass in Israel. Doesn't make it any less disappointing (and probably much more so to you than to me, as I can get married here if I want). Likud should just push for a free vote on it.

Religious Christians (OVP)
Religious Christians (CDU)
Orthodox Jews (pretty all parties in power right now but Likud)

In Germany it's more the CSU than the CDU, though both don't want it. In Israel, coalition parties Yisrael Beiteinu and Kulanu support SSM too, as far as I know. Only Shas, UTJ and BY oppose it.

Here it is more a generational and urban/rural divide within the ÖVP that's preventing full marriage rights. Young and urban ÖVP-folks generally back gay marriage by a wide margin (if they have not moved over to NEOS yet), even rural young ÖVP-voters do. But rural older folk (and there are still many around) are against it.

And as long as the ÖVP (or the FPÖ) is in charge of something, this won't change. The best you can hope for here is full rights for LGBT's similar to heteros, just that it isn't called "marriage" ...