Supreme Court rules that same-sex marriage is now permitted in Aruba and Curaçao

People of the same gender will now be allowed to marry each other in Aruba and Curaçao, the Supreme Court ruled on Friday. Till now, gay marriage was prohibited. The ruling was met with loud applause in the hall of the Senate in The Hague.

With this judgment, the Supreme Court upholds an earlier ruling of the joint Court of Justice of Aruba, Curaçao, Sint Maarten and Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba, which ruled on December 6, 2022, that marriages between people of the same sex are allowed in the countries.

The Fundacion Orguyo Aruba Foundation then initiated that case, and the Human Rights Caribbean Foundation did the same in Curaçao. However, the governments of Aruba and Curaçao appealed against that ruling.

This resulted in the court in Willemstad ruling that not allowing same-sex marriage was inconsistent with the ban on discrimination and state regulations. The Supreme Court agrees with this.

Egmar Irausquin, secretary of the Fundacion Orguyo Aruba foundation, called it a “big step, the start of equality.” He added that a lot still needs to happen, but this is a start.

He had not expected same-sex marriage to be permitted so quickly. “I was thinking of 2030 because the Supreme Court may take a little longer about it or because we had to take new steps.” But this was unnecessary, so Irausquin thinks it is time to party.

According to him, people of the same sex can already get married at the city hall on Friday, but he hopes that the couples will wait until he and his colleagues return to Aruba next week, he said with a wink.