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
Recognition of same-sex unions in Israel by the Gay Fathers Association. Same-sex marriages solemnised overseas are not recognised by religious authorities in Israel. Despite the fact that same-sex marriage (or opposite-sex civil marriage) is not legal in Israel, unmarried same-sex and opposite-sex couples have equal access to many of the rights of marriage in the form of unregistered cohabitation status, similar to common-law marriage. In February 2009, MK Nitzan Horowitz (Meretz) introduced a civil marriage bill which included provisions for same-sex marriages. The bill was rejected in May 2012 in a 39 to 11 vote, with 70 not attending. In March 2010, the Knesset passed the