Same-sex union legislation marriages performed in the Netherlands are recognized in Aruba, Curaçao and Sint Maarten. Whether same-sex couples should be allowed to marry has been and remains the topic of debate worldwide. Thirty-four countries and four jurisdictions worldwide have passed constitutional amendments that explicitly prohibit the legal recognition of same-sex marriage and sometimes other forms of legal unions as well. Seventeen countries and twenty-nine jurisdictions worldwide have authorized civil unions or unregistered cohabitation for same-sex couples as an alternative to marriage. The legal name of those unions as well as the number of rights that they provide can vary greatly. The first
Same-sex marriage in Belgium 2000 to 2014, 698,395 people had reported being in a statutory cohabitation, with that number heavily increasing over the years. 35% of these cohabitations, however, had ended by 2014. In 2014, 3.2% of all statutory cohabitations were between same-sex couples. In the late 1990s, gay rights organisations in Belgium lobbied for the legalization of same-sex marriage. Belgian civil law did not explicitly require that two people be of opposite gender to be able to marry, as this was considered self-evident. Private member's bills in the 1990s by Vlaams Blok senators to add this as an explicit requirement were never considered.