Bermuda Court Overturns Same-Sex Marriage Ban in Win For Tourism Industry
Photo Credit: Bermuda's LGTBQ community is celebrating a historic win for marriage equality. Pictured are tourists on Horseshoe Bay Beach in Bermuda. Flickr / Andrew Currie
Skift Take
The Bermuda Triangle is legendary for making things mysteriously disappear. But one thing that wasn't lost in Bermuda this week was a legal understanding that a ban on same-sex marriage is bad for business and morally wrong in 2018.
Bermuda's Supreme Court overturned the island's short-lived ban on same-sex marriage on Wednesday, paving the way for those marriages to resume in Bermuda and on Bermuda-registered cruise ships.
The ruling is a win for OUTBermuda, a non-profit that advocates for LGBTQ rights in Bermuda, which filed a lawsuit against Bermuda's Attorney General. Maryellen Jackson, an openly gay Bermuda resident and teacher, was also a co-plaintiff in the case.
Bermuda's path to its historic ruling was complicated, to say the least. In 2016, voters rejected referendum questions that asked whether same-sex marriage should be legalized, although less than 50 percent of the voting population turned out to vote. A Supreme Court case last year legalized same-sex marriages, but island politicians later introduced the Domestic Partnership Act in parliament which would ban same-sex marriage. The act was signed in February and took effect on June 1, but the court's ruling on Wednesday quickly nullified i
