20 Historic Bans and the Decades It Took to Lift Them

Key facts

• India's Section 377, criminalizing homosexuality, was struck down by the Supreme Court in 2018 after 157 years.
• Alabama removed its interracial marriage ban from the state constitution in 2000, 33 years after Loving v. Virginia.
• France formally overturned its absinthe ban in 2011, 96 years after it was enacted.
• The US lifted its absinthe ban in 2007, 95 years after it was imposed.
• Italy legalized divorce in 1970, confirmed by referendum in 1974.
• Ireland's divorce ban was repealed by a 50.3% to 49.7% referendum in 1995.
• Iceland's beer ban ended in 1989, 74 years after prohibition began.
• The Boston Marathon officially admitted women in 1972, 75 years after its founding.
• South Africa repealed the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act in 1985, 36 years after it was enacted.
• US private gold ownership was restored in 1974, 41 years after confiscation.
• England and Wales decriminalized gay sex in 1967; Scotland in 1980; Northern Ireland in 1982.
• Swiss women gained federal suffrage in 1971; Appenzell Innerrhoden followed in 1991.
• Saudi Arabia lifted its driving ban on women in 2018.
• The UK ban on Lady Chatterley's Lover effectively ended with a 1960 obscenity trial.
• Singapore partially lifted its chewing gum ban in 2004, 12 years after it began.
• The UK ban on women's professional boxing was overturned by tribunal in 1998.
• Coca-Cola re-entered India in 1993 after a 16-year absence.
• Bhutan introduced television in 1999, the last country to do so.
• US Prohibition lasted 13 years, repealed in 1933.
• Finland's prohibition lasted 13 years, repealed in 1932.