Less than one year after the country’s first gay couples were legally married in Switzerland, the Swiss Federal Statistical Office (FSO) has revealed that more than 700 same-sex couples tied the knot throughout 2022. The legal change came into force on July 1, 2022, allowing 749 gay couples to get married before the end of last year.
More than half of the 749 gay couples who got married in the second half of 2022 were same-sex male couples. 394 of the newly-married couples identified as male, with male partnerships also making up around 60 percent of applications to convert civil partnerships into marriages.
The statistics revealed by the Federal Statistical Office (FSO) also showed that two-thirds of the marriages took place in major Swiss cities, with most taking place in Zurich, Geneva and Bern.
Before the legal change took place, gay couples in Switzerland were only allowed to seek a civil partnership - a law enacted in 2007. After the "Marriage for All" initiative was accepted by voters at a referendum in September 2021, same-sex couples have had the right by law to enter a civil marriage or convert their partnership into a marriage since July 1, 2022.
The FSO also published data on the number of people who changed their gender in 2022. 1.171 people filed to change their legal gender with registry offices across all Swiss cantons.
More than half of those who changed their gender through official channels were people aged between 15 and 24. Since the beginning of 2022, people in Switzerland have been able to legally change their official gender without needing to go to court, allowing transgender and intersex people to change their name and gender more smoothly.