There is similar opposition to same-sex marriage in other European countries, especially ones with strong Roman Catholic traditions such as Poland, which has rejected attempts to allow gay and lesbian couples to "register" their unions, and Ireland and Italy.
In many other countries, the issue is smothered by taboo.
Sexuality in general is seldom discussed in India, where gay sex remains punishable under a law imposed during the British Raj. In Russia, the 1995 Family Code specifies that marriage is a state between a man and a woman.
And though homosexuality is a frequent theme of some Japanese manga comics and some TV characters revel in camp, few of the country's real-life gays and lesbians like to draw much attention.
In 2007, Kanako Otsuji, the country's first openly lesbian politician, "married" her lover, Maki Kimura, in a public ceremony in Nagoya. But Japan does not recognize either same-sex marriage or civil unions.
Same-sex marriage is a remote prospect in the Arab world and Iran. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinijad last year insisted that there were no homosexuals in his country. Human rights activists have accused Iran of executing homosexuals for engaging in consensual sex, and homosexuality can also be punished by death in Saudi Arabia, Mauritania and Yemen.
In Iraq, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the major religious leader for the country's Shiites, has issued a fatwa against homosexuality. The fatwa has since disappeared from his website but has never been rescinded.
Despite violence directed at gays and lesbians, a spokesman for Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki told The Times last year that "nobody's paying attention to the issue. It's not the custom of the people of Iraq."
Few gays and lesbians live openly in Africa because harassment and discrimination are prevalent outside South Africa. Some religious leaders have decried homosexuality as "un-African," and Gambian President Yahya Jammeh declared it to be incompatible with his country's Islamic tenets. He threatened to behead any gays or lesbians who did not leave the country.
Same-sex unions are also widely banned in heavily Roman Catholic Latin America. But there are a few places where gay and lesbian couples can forge civil unions: Uruguay, Colombia and Argentina's capital, Buenos Aires, which hosted the Gay World Cup of soccer last year.
And hundreds of gays and lesbians have held ceremonies with little fuss in Mexico City since that federal district recognized same-sex civil unions in March 2007.
The California ruling did draw sharp criticism from one person: confessed Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who used his June 5 arraignment to show that news of California's same-sex marriages had reached the Guantanamo Bay detention facility.
"Evil laws are not the laws of God," Mohammed told the U.S. military and civilian officials at his trial, citing "laws allowing same-sex marriages" as an example.
"I consider all American laws under the Constitution to be evil," he said.
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bruce.wallace@latimes.com
Contributing to this report were Times staff writers Richard Boudreaux in Jerusalem; Henry Chu in New Delhi; Andres D'Alessandro in Buenos Aires; Borzou Daragahi in Beirut; Marla Dickerson in Mexico City; Maggie Farley in New York; Kim Murphy in London; Ned Parker in Baghdad; Edmund Sanders in Nairobi, Kenya; Megan Stack in Moscow; Tracy Wilkinson in Rome; and Carol Williams in Miami.
