In 2009, Hungary adopted a life partnership law similar to other European registered partnerships. The Hungarian law confers most of the legal rights of marriage on same-sex couples, including tax, employment, immigration, and inheritance benefits; but it does not permit partners to adopt or allow a spouse to take his or her partner's name.

Austrian Civil Partnership

In December 2009, Austria's Parliament passed legislation permitting homosexual couples to enter into civil partnerships. The legislation, effective January 1, 2010, was adopted on a 110-64 vote. It confers many of the legal rights enjoyed by heterosexual couples, but denies access to artificial insemination and the right to adopt children.

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Ireland Civil Partnership

The climate for recognition of same-sex couples in traditionally conservative Ireland was vastly improved by the scandals involving Roman Catholic priests and nuns in the first decade of the twenty-first century. These scandals weakened the moral authority of the Church and enabled politicians to work for social justice without worrying about political pushback from the Church.

In 2009 and 2010, concrete proposals for a civil partnership bill were developed and refined. The bill that was finally signed into law on July 19, 2010, provides a wide range of protections, rights, and obligations for same-sex couples in areas such as pensions, taxes, social welfare, domestic violence, inheritance, and joint tenancy. It grants all the rights and responsibilities of marriage except the right to adopt children.

The bill, modeled on the U.K.'s civil partnership legislation, was, despite opposition from the Roman Catholic Church, passed without a vote in the Dàil and with an overwhelming majority in the Seanad at the beginning of July. It went into effect on January 1, 2011.

After it was signed into law by the President of Ireland, Mary McAleese, Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern described the civil partnership bill as "one of the most important pieces of civil rights legislation to be enacted since independence," adding that "Ireland will be a better place for its enactment."

Latin America

Although a popular perception is that the countries of Latin America lag behind the United States in granting rights to gay and lesbian couples, that perception is belied by recent developments. In 2000, the Brazilian government extended de facto legal recognition to same-sex relationships by allowing gay and lesbian couples the right to inherit each other's pension and social security benefits. The Brazilian policy requires applicants to prove a "stable union."

In 2002, the city of Buenos Aires adopted a domestic partnership ordinance that granted legal status to same-sex couples and a handful of rights such as hospital visits and pension benefits. Similarly, a bill was recently introduced in Chile's Congress to recognize same-sex couples.

In 2006, Mexico City's legislative assembly adopted a domestic partnership ordinance that provides same-sex couples many of the rights of marriage, including inheritance rights and pension benefits, though not adoption rights.

A series of rulings, beginning in 2007, by Colombia's Constitutional Court, have granted same-sex couples many of the property, inheritance, health, and pension rights enjoyed by married heterosexual couples in that country.

In 2011, the Court gave Congress two years to extend marriage rights to gay couples. Finding that that Columbia's gay and lesbian citizens currently lack the full set of rights afforded to heterosexual married couples in Columbia, the Court instructed Congress to pass a remedy through "comprehensive, systematic, and orderly legislation" by June 20, 2013 to address the imbalance. Should the country's lawmakers fail to pass legislation within that time, gay and lesbian couples will be permitted to go before a notary or a court to have their partnership officially recognized.

In 2008, Uruguay became the first Latin American country to adopt a national civil union law, the Ley de Unión Concubinaria. The law permits both same-sex and opposite-sex couples to enter into a civil union after living together for at least five years. Couples in civil unions are entitled to most of the benefits that married couples are afforded, including social security entitlements, inheritance rights, and joint ownership of goods and property. In addition, same-sex couple are permitted joint adoption rights.

In December 2009, Mexico City's legislature passed a bill permitting same-sex marriage. The bill, which defines marriage as "the free uniting of two people," was quickly signed into law by Mayor Marcelo Ebrard. The law permits same-sex couples to adopt children, apply for bank loans together, and be included in the insurance policies of their spouse, as well as the rights that were provided in the domestic partnership law.

The law was bitterly denounced by the Roman Catholic hierarchy and challenged as unconstitutional by Mexico's federal government, but after the nation's highest court refused to intervene to stay the law, the city began issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples in March 2010.

On August 4, 2010, Mexico's supreme court announced that it had upheld the constitutionality of the law on an 8-2 vote. On August 10, 2010, the court further ruled, on a 9-2 vote, that same-sex marriages performed in Mexico City must be honored as legal in all 31 Mexican states, although they are not obligated to perform same-sex marriages themselves.