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CAPE TOWN - The South African parliament overwhelmingly approved a bill today to make the nation the first on the continent to legalise gay marriage.
The bill was pushed through the National Assembly by the ruling African National Congress amid protests by religious groups and opposition parties in a region where homosexuality remains largely taboo.
South Africa's cabinet approved the bill in August after the country's highest court ruled it was unconstitutional to deny gay people the right to marry.
The court gave parliament until December 1 to change the law.
The Civil Union bill, which gives same-sex couples the same rights as heterosexual ones, still needs approval by the second house of parliament but is expected to come into effect by the end of November.
When enacted South Africa would become the first country in Africa to accord homosexual couples over the age of 18 the same rights as their heterosexual counterparts, following countries such as Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain and Canada.
"When we attained our democracy, we sought to distinguish ourselves from an unjust painful past, by declaring that never again shall it be that any South African will be discriminated against on the basis of colour, creed, culture and sex," Home Affairs Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula told parliament.
Anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela, released from prison in 1990, led the ANC to triumph in South Africa's multi-racial elections in 1994 to become the country's first black president.
Opposition parties spoke out against the change, echoing unhappiness by religious groups which staged protest marches in the run-up to the vote.
"It is hypocritical in the extreme to talk about moral regeneration and African renaissance and turn around and surrender to this cultural aberration," said Motsoko Pheko, leader of the Pan Africanist Congress party.
The bill may present problems because it allows the marriage officer to refuse to conduct a marriage on religious grounds, said Pierre de Vos, constitutional law professor at the University of the Western Cape.
"It makes a human rights issue an issue of conscience. This is the equivalent of saying the marriage officer can refuse to marry an interracial couple," said Vos.
The government must revisit the country's entire marriage regime, including customary and religious-specific marriages, so they fall under a single arrangement, said Patrick Chauke, chairman of the committee that pushed the bill through.
- REUTERS
