Civil Union Act, 2006
South African law legalising same-sex marriage
The Civil Union Act, 2006 (Act No. 17 of 2006) is an act of the Parliament of South Africa which legalised same-sex marriage. It allows two people, regardless of gender, to form either a marriage or a civil partnership. The act was enacted as a consequence of the judgment of the Constitutional Court in the case of Minister of Home Affairs v Fourie, which ruled that it was unconstitutional for the state to provide the benefits of marriage to opposite-sex couples while denying them to same-sex couples.
Legislative history
The Constitutional Court's judgment set a deadline of 1 December 2006 for Parliament to rectify the situation. If Parliament missed the deadline, words would be "read in" to the Marriage Act to allow same-sex marriages to take place.
On 24 August 2006, the Cabinet approved the Civil Union Bill for submission to Parliament. It was introduced in the National Assembly by the Minister of Home Affairs on 12 September. The original bill only allowed for civil partnerships between same-sex partners, and also included provisions to recognise domestic partnerships between unmarried partners, both same-sex and opposite-sex. The bill was amended by the Portfolio Committee on Home Affairs to allow both marriages and civil partnerships, and to open them to opposite-sex as well as same-sex couples.
The public source identifies “Civil Union Act, 2006” as south African law legalising same-sex marriage. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Civil, Union and South.
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The record creator and administrative purpose are central evidence, because official documentation reflects both action and institutional priorities. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5124599. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2006.
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This entry incorporates text from “Civil Union Act, 2006” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.