How to get paid for a law Iran cannot legally pass

Polymarket's Iran gay marriage market has drifted down all year, from about 4.5% in April to 2% now. It has never traded above 5%. Betting no costs about 98 cents and returns roughly 2% when the market closes on December 31. Traders have moved more than $70,000 through it.

To settle yes, Iran's government has to legally recognize a marriage between two people of the same sex, through a law, a constitutional amendment, or a binding court ruling. Civil unions do not count, and neither does a marriage performed abroad.

Iran's constitution covers this in two lines. Article 4 says every law and regulation must be based on Islamic criteria. Article 12 says the Twelver Ja'fari school of Shia law "will remain eternally immutable."

The Guardian Council is 12 people. Six are clerics appointed by the Supreme Leader, and six are jurists. Article 94 gives the council 10 days to review every bill parliament passes and return anything incompatible. Under Article 96, the six clerics rule on Islamic law by themselves, by majority. So a law would need four of those six to call it compatible.

The rest is on the record:

• Iran's Islamic Penal Code of 2013 sets penalties for same-sex relations in articles 233 to 239, including lashes and, in defined circumstances, the death penalty, per the Human Dignity Trust
• President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said at Columbia University in 2007: "In Iran we don't have homosexuals"
• About 38 countries have legalized same-sex marriage, the Netherlands first in 2001 and Thailand in January 2025
• No country with an Islamic legal system is on that list
• The fastest journey anywhere was South Africa, eight years from a 1998 court ruling to marriage in 2006