Same-sex marriage in Belgium Same-sex marriage in Belgium On 1 June 2003, Belgium became the second country in the world to legalise same-sex marriage, after the Netherlands. "Statutory cohabitation", open to any two legally consenting cohabiting persons, is also possible since 1 January 2000. In 1995, a bill was introduced in Parliament to provide for a legal framework of "cohabitation agreements". It was mostly intended as a response to the lowering marriage rates, rather than giving rights to same-sex couples. In 1998, the bill was changed to "statutory cohabitation" (; ; ) and finally voted on. The Chamber of Representatives approved it by a
Same-sex marriage in Indiana a bill removing the state's same-sex marriage ban and replacing references to "husband and wife" with the gender-neutral term "spouses" amongst other amendments, was introduced by Representative Jim Lucas (R). The bill passed its first reading on January 9, 2017. A lawsuit brought in 2002 by the ACLU on behalf of 3 same-sex couples seeking marriage rights and challenging a 1986 law that limited marriages to male-female couples failed in the Marion County Superior Court in May 2003. The judge ruled that restricting marriage to different-sex couples "promotes the state's interest in encouraging procreation to occur in a context where