Greenland Parliament Unanimously Green-Lights Marriage Equality

Greenland has become the 21st nation in which legal marriage rights are now available to same-sex couples, according to multiple media reports.

The new law, which was agreed to unanimously in Greenland's Parliament on Tuesday, will go into effect October 1, and will include adoption rights for same-sex couples, U.K. LGBT outlet Pink News reports.

"The Greenland Parliament today embraced the freedom to marry and made it local... Another part of the world and another step forward," Freedom to Marry founder and president Evan Wolfson commented on Facebook.

The autonomous nation, located within the Kingdom of Denmark, with , first adopted a civil union law in 1996, in accordance with Danish law at the time, reports Gay Star News. But Greenland, decided to hold onto the civil union law, even as Denmark embraced marriage equality in 2012.

The addition of Greenland -- with a population of fewer than 60,000 people spread across an ice-capped land mass more than three times the size of Texas -- means there are now there are 21 countries in which same-sex couples can get legally marry.

According to U.S.-based advocacy group Freedom to Marry,

"Nineteen countries have approved the freedom to marry for same-sex couples nationwide (Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Canada, South Africa, Norway, Sweden, Portugal, Iceland, Argentina, Denmark, France, Brazil, Uruguay, New Zealand, Britain, Luxembourg, Finland and Ireland), while two others have regional or court-directed provisions enabling same-sex couples to share in the freedom to marry (Mexico and the United States). In Slovenia, Parliament approved a marriage bill in March 2015 but is not final."