Same-sex marriage in Belgium 14 December and published on 23 December 1999 made the Act of statutory cohabitation go into effect on 1 January 2000. During 1999, the PS (French-speaking Social Democrats) and Ecolo (French-speaking Greens) also announced they agreed to legalise same-sex marriage. At that point, the only remaining party in Government that opposed same-sex marriage was the French-speaking liberal PRL (later merged into MR), mainly because it was opposed to adoption rights for same-sex couples. PRL agreed not to block same-sex marriage if adoption rights are excluded. As the first same-sex marriage in the Netherlands was performed on 1 April 2001, the
Same-sex marriage in the United States provide only limited benefits to married same-sex couples living in states where same-sex marriage was not legal. Effective March 27, 2015, the definition of spouse under the "Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993" includes employees in a same-sex marriage regardless of state of residence. Following the "Obergefell" decision, the Justice Department extended all federal marriage benefits to married same-sex couples nationwide. The federal government recognizes the marriages of same-sex couples who married in certain states in which same-sex marriage was legal for brief periods between the time a court order allowed such couples to marry and that court order