Vice Highlight Bermuda’s Marriage Equality Laws
“The U.S. and Bermuda have their own distinct legal traditions, but Bermuda’s example illustrates the profound vulnerability of progress: LGBTQ equality cannot be taken for granted, even within the battles that feel as if they are already over,” Vice noted in an in depth report on Bermuda’s marriage equality laws.
The VICE website said, “After the U.K. Privy Council upheld Bermuda’s decision to repeal same-sex marriage in a March court ruling, Roderick Ferguson felt like he was mourning in isolation. Just a handful of media outlets commented on the decision, and it seemed to Ferguson like the world had already moved on. The lack of attention from the press was a stark contrast to February 2018, when publications like CNN, USA Today, and The Guardian reported in depth on the passage of a bill then making Bermuda—a self-governing British territory—the first municipality in the world to overturn marriage equality. Even Ellen DeGeneres tweeted about it.
“The Privy Council ruling was the culmination of a years-long battle for LGBTQ equality in Bermuda, one that has taken several twists en route to the present moment. Before 1994, both oral and anal sex were punishable by up to 10 years in prison, and Bermuda updated its Human Rights Act to ban anti-gay discrimination in 2016.
“Marriage equality itself has actually been argued twice in Bermuda, in two separate cases—the first of which resulted in the Supreme Court of Bermuda legalizing same-sex marriage in 2017. After Bermuda’s governor, John Rankin, signed a bill invalidating that ruling in favor of domestic partnerships the following year, LGBTQ activists filed a second lawsuit and won the rights to marriage again—just for the Privy Council to overturn the decision once more.
“Today, Bermuda is in an uneasy place—LGBTQ people are mindful of the rights that have been secured, yet still shell-shocked from the repeated flip-flops of the past few years. The territory’s domestic partnership law has been hailed as among the most progressive in the world—allowing same-sex couples rights like hospital visitation and adoption—but it draws the line at marriage. That omission reaffirms a second-class status for same-sex couples who have put everything on the line to be treated as equals.
“As the United States teeters on the precipice of a major LGBTQ rights backslide, the activists and attorneys involved in Bermuda’s marriage equality fight expressed that the U.S. would be remiss not to pay attention to how rights can be won and then quickly ripped away.
“This feels especially pressing after the Supreme Court repealed Roe v. Wade in an opinion authored by Justice Samuel Alito referring to the 1973 ruling as “egregiously wrong from the start.” The decision could imperil LGBTQ rights won in Obergefell v. Hodges, the Supreme Court’s 2015 marriage equality ruling, and Lawrence v. Texas, the 2003 decision decriminalizing sodomy. In an opinion concurring with Roe’s repeal, Justice Clarence Thomas called to reconsider both of those landmark court victories.
“The U.S. and Bermuda have their own distinct legal traditions, but Bermuda’s example illustrates the profound vulnerability of progress: LGBTQ equality cannot be taken for granted, even within the battles that feel as if they are already over.”
You can read the full article here on Vice.com.
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