Thousands march in Northern Ireland for same sex marriage
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Thousands are marching in Northern Ireland to demand that the region's leaders permit same-sex marriage.
The demonstrators in Belfast on Saturday want same-sex couples to be treated the same way in Northern Ireland as they are in the rest of the UK, where same-sex marriage is legal. The issue is a stumbling block to restoring Northern Ireland's Catholic-Protestant power-sharing administration, which has been suspended for more than two years.
Northern Ireland's 1.8 million people have been without a functioning administration since the government collapsed in January 2017 over a failed green-energy project. The rift later widened to broader cultural issues separating Northern Ireland's British unionists and Irish nationalists.
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The socially conservative Democratic Unionist Party, an ally of British Prime Minister Theresa May's government, is opposed to a redefinition of the law.