Same-sex marriage has been officially signed into law in Australia, a day after MPs overwhelmingly approved a historic bill.<\/p>\n
Australia’s Governor-General Peter Cosgrove signed off on the law on Friday – a formality required to enact the legislation.<\/p>\n
The vote on Thursday set off rarely matched celebrations in parliament, including cheers, hugs and a song.<\/p>\n
Supporters celebrated across Australia, many donning rainbow colours.<\/p>\n
“So it is all done. It is part of the law of the land,” Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said after a brief ceremony on Friday.<\/p>\n
He said the law would take effect immediately after midnight.<\/p>\n
The first marriage ceremonies will happen from 9 January, given couples must give a month’s notice of their intention to wed.<\/p>\n
Same-sex weddings conducted overseas will be immediately recognised in Australia.<\/p>\n
The legislation sailed through parliament without amendments after\u00a0Australians overwhelmingly supported the reform in a voluntary national poll<\/a>.<\/p>\n “Australians had their say and overwhelmingly voted yes to marriage equality, to love, respect and commitment,” Mr Turnbull said.<\/p>\n “They told us politicians to get on with it and we did.”<\/p>\n Mr Turnbull called the marriage reform one of the most significant achievements of his government to date.<\/p>\n However, the government has also faced criticism from political opponents who say it delayed the legislation due to internal division.<\/p>\n http:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/world-australia-42274925<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Same-sex marriage has been officially signed into law in Australia, a day after MPs overwhelmingly approved a historic bill. Australia’s Governor-General Peter Cosgrove signed off on the law on Friday – a formality required to enact the legislation. The vote on Thursday set off rarely matched celebrations in parliament, including cheers, hugs and a song. Supporters celebrated across Australia, many… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":52,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1092","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1092","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/52"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1092"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1092\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1093,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1092\/revisions\/1093"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}