 Among the most highly contested civil rights issues of recent years has been the question of whether marriage laws should be extended to include same-sex couples. Over the past two decades, a number of countries have liberalized their laws to enable such couples to become married, despite the opposition of those who think that it is morally or theologically unjustified to alter the traditional understanding of marriage as the union of a man and a woman. The countries that currently recognize same-sex marriages include the Netherlands, Belgium, Canada, South Africa, Spain, Norway, Sweden, Mexico, Portugal, Iceland, Argentina, Denmark, Brazil, France, England, New Zealand, and the United States. In most of these countries, nationwide same-sex marriage was brought about by legislation. But in the United States, the Supreme Court ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges (2015) extended same-sex marriage from ten states to all fifty.