Same-sex marriage in Luxembourg

A bill for the legalisation of same-sex marriages was enacted by the Chamber of Deputies on 18 June 2014 and signed into law by Grand Duke Henri on 4 July.

Luxembourg was the last Benelux country, the tenth in Europe and the sixteenth in the world to allow same-sex couples to marry nationwide.

A bill to legalise same-sex marriage was introduced as early as 9 May 1996 by Deputy Renée Wagener of the opposition Greens.

On 13 January 2004, the Council of State criticised taking the French civil solidarity pact as basis rather than the Belgian statutory cohabitation, which was of superior legal quality.

The Council also recommended considering the legalisation of same-sex marriage, again taking neighbouring Belgium, which had then recently taken that step, as example.

[13][14] During a debate on 19 January 2010, the Minister of Justice, François Biltgen, announced that a law to legalise same-sex marriage (with the exception of certain adoption rights) would be finalized before the summer vacation break of Parliament.

[24] On 6 February 2013, the Parliament's Legal Affairs Committee agreed to approve the measure opening marriage to same-sex couples.

[35] The coalition agreement of the new Bettel–Schneider Government, sworn in on 4 December 2013 and led by gay Prime Minister Xavier Bettel, included marriage and adoption rights for same-sex couples, scheduled for the first trimester of 2014.

[a][36] On 8 January 2014, the Minister of Justice, Félix Braz, stated that Parliament would vote on the bill in the summer of 2014 and, if approved, it would take effect before the end of 2014.

[37][38] On 19 March 2014, the Legal Affairs Committee completed its work on the marriage bill, and sent it to the Council of State, which released its opinion on 20 May 2014.

[51] The first same-sex couple to marry in Luxembourg was Henri Lorenzo Huber and Jean-Paul Olinger in Differdange on 1 January 2015.

[53] On 15 May 2015, Prime Minister Xavier Bettel married his partner Gauthier Destenay in a private ceremony at Luxembourg City Hall.

Bettel became the first EU member state leader and just the second serving head of government worldwide (after Iceland's Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir) to marry a person of the same sex.

[54] In November 2016, Vice Prime Minister Etienne Schneider confirmed that he and his partner Jérôme Domange had married in a private ceremony sometime in 2016.

[57] The petition, called Schutz fir d'Kand in Luxembourgish ("Protection of the Child"), accompanied with about 4,500 signatures, was then re-presented to the Chamber of Deputies, which rejected it again in November 2016.