Seeing that France and Uruguay are about to legalize same-sex marriage, I got curious. So I looked up some stats, because I’m a dork. And I’m sharing them, because some of you are dorks too.

  1. Eleven countries, not including France and Uruguay, have marriage equality nationwide.
  2. Three more — Brazil, Mexico, and the United States — have marriage equality in some jurisdictions but not others.
  3. Although same-sex marriage is legally recognized for less than half of Brazilians, Brazil is the country with the most same-sex-marriage-legal citizens, at 92.6 million.
  4. Nearly a quarter of the people in the whole world who live in places where same-sex couples can marry live there.
  5. France’s new law will make it the second most populous marriage equality jurisdiction, with 65.4 million people.
  6. France’s law will increase the number of folks who have marriage equality worldwide by 15%.
  7. Uruguay will bump up the numbers by another 3.7 million, less than one percent.
  8. After France and Uruguay take the plunge, the land of marriage equality will have a population of about 452 million people.
  9. That would be the third largest country in the world, if it were a country.
  10. That’s about six and a half percent of the world’s population.
  11. Right now, the largest country with full marriage equality is South Africa, with 50.6 million people.
  12. In the United States, 49.4 million live in marriage equality jurisdictions.
  13. More South Africans have marriage equality than Americans, in other words.
  14. Full marriage equality in the US would boost the global total by nearly fifty percent.
  15. The list of present and impending marriage-equality countries, in descending order of population is this: Brazil*, France, South Africa, The United States*, Spain, Argentina, Canada, The Netherlands, Belgium, Portugal, Mexico*, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Uruguay, Iceland.
  16. That’s sixteen countries, of which only two are primarily English-speaking.
  17. Canada is the world’s only majority-English country with full marriage equality.
  18. The Netherlands is the world’s only majority-non-religious country with full marriage equality.
  19. Nine of the sixteen are majority or plurality Catholic.
  20. Including seven of the ten most populous.
  21. That means that nearly two-thirds of the people in the world who live in marriage equality jurisdictions live in Catholic countries, though less than a fifth of the world’s population is Catholic.

#themoreyouknow

Update | As @SpringaldJack notes on Twitter, counting the US jurisdictions where same-sex marriage is recognized as marriage equality jurisdictions counts residents of those jurisdictions “as having marriage equality, which they don’t.”

There are jurisdictions in the US which recognize same-sex marriage. There are no jurisdictions in the US with full marriage equality. (The situation is apparently similar in Mexico. Brazilian couples’ status appears to be a bit more complex.)