Ten years of equality in Spain (10 años de igualdad en españa)

America should be very proud. #LoveWins pic.twitter.com/qH1OA1BV2j

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) June 27, 2015

There’s been a lot of excitement this past week to do with the US Supreme Court’s finding in favour of marriage equality in that country. And quite rightly too, as the finding means that the West’s most influential country has made same-sex marriage legal across the length and breadth of its land. It is a big deal.

But let’s not forget that 37 states of the Union already enjoyed marriage equality and, more importantly, the United States is country number 21 to legalise same-sex marriage.

My adopted home, Spain, celebrated 10 years of marriage equality this week. During this past decade 31,610 same-sex couples have married here (and I’m proud to say that G and I are included in that statistic).

The voting board in Spain's congreso (Parliament) showing the historic win for marriage equality on June 30, 2005

And Spain wasn’t even the first county to embrace marriage equality: Holland (in 2001) and Belgium (in 2003) beat it to it and Canada was pipped to the 4^th position by Spain by just a few days.

Of course with America’s decision the sad-old predictions have been trotted out: the erosion of family values, the devaluation of the institution of marriage, the "slippery slope" towards state-sanctioned incest, bestiality or polygamy – the latter, embarrassingly, was just repeated by a senior member of my own Australia’s government. 

But let’s be serious for a moment. Have any of these things actually happened in the 14 years since marriage equality has been a fact in our world? Of course not.

In Spain, the 31-odd thousand same sex marriages that have been performed in the last decade, in my eyes, can only strengthen marriage as an institution - that's 62-odd thousand extra people embracing marriage who never would have had the opportunity without marriage equality.

Recent polls here suggest that between 68 and a whopping 85 percent of Spaniards are in agreement with the right to marry having been extended to same-sex couples. It was around 58% ten years ago when the law was introduced.

Perhaps even more telling is that almost 60% of conservative voters, whose political party of choice voted against marriage equality and even took the law to the Constitutional Court (Spain’s version of the US’s Supreme Court) – and lost – now support marriage equality.

I would imagine that if the institution of marriage had been damaged here over the past decade, these numbers would not be nearly so positive.

With my own marriage, not once in the whole process – from filing the paperwork and picking up our marriage licence in the registro civil (Births, Deaths and Marriages) to the wonderful service in the ajuntamiento (town hall) - were G and I made to feel by anyone that this was somehow an inappropriate or unusual thing that we were doing. At our little reception afterwards, other diners at the restaurant went out of their way to come over and congratulate us.

Oh, and just to be clear, Spaniards are still not allowed (and not asking) to marry their brothers and sisters, dogs, cats, ferrets or more than one person at a time either.

So on this 10^th anniversary of marriage equality in my adopted home I want to raise a glass to Spain, the USA and to the 19 other nations of the Earth that have embraced equality and, sadly, waggle my index finger at my birth country who, in the face of an unstoppable tide, seems determined to hold out for as long as it possibly, petulantly can (despite the wishes of its own people).

Here's a little snippet from (rather fittingly) the movie version of Hairspray, that sums up quite nicely where I think we are today...