Timeline of same-sex marriage

This page contains a timeline of significant events regarding same-sex marriage and legal recognition of same-sex couples worldwide. It begins with the history of same-sex unions during ancient times, which consisted of unions ranging from informal and temporary relationships to highly ritualized unions, and continues to modern-day state-recognized same-sex marriage. Events concerning same-sex marriages becoming legal in a country or in a country's state are listed in bold.

Various types of same-sex marriages have existed, ranging from informal, unsanctioned relationships to highly ritualized unions.

Cicero mentions the marriage (using the Latin verb for "to marry", i.e. nubere) of the son of Curio the Elder, but he does it in a metaphorical form to criticize his enemy Antonius. Cicero states thus that the younger Curio was "united in a stable and permanent marriage" to Antonius. Martial also mentions a number of same-sex marriages, but always in derisory terms against people whom he wants to mock.

Practices and rituals for same sex unions were more recognized in Mesopotamia than in ancient Egypt. In ancient Assyria, there was considered to be nothing wrong with homosexual love between men. The Almanac of Incantations contained prayers giving equal standing to the love of a man for both a woman and a man.

At least two of the Roman Emperors were in same-sex unions; and in fact, thirteen out of the first fourteen Roman Emperors held to be bisexual or exclusively homosexual. The first Roman emperor to have married a man was Nero, who is reported to have married two other men on different occasions. First with one of his freedmen, Pythagoras, to whom Nero took the role of the bride, and later as a groom Nero married a young boy, who resembled one of his concubines, named Sporus.

Adolescent emperor Elagabalus referred to his chariot driver, a blond slave from Caria named Hierocles, as his husband. He also married an athlete named Zoticus in a lavish public ceremony in Rome amidst the rejoicings of the citizens.

...
Wikipedia