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
History of same-sex marriage in Australia plebiscite via postal mail, a proposal which received a mixed response. Soon after that the issue of same-sex couples being unable to divorce in Australia following a marriage in an overseas jurisdiction (where same-sex marriage is legal) emerged. In August 2017, the United Nations Human Rights Committee ruled that the lack of an official same-sex divorce scheme in Australia constituted a breach of human rights and stated the Australian Government was obligated to provide "an effective remedy". Liberal MP's who raised the prospect of a free vote in the party in June 2017 had their advances rejected by several members