Malta has voted to legalise same-sex marriage, despite opposition from the Catholic Church. <br/><br/>The island nation's parliament agreed to amend country's marriage act, replacing words like husband and wife with the gender-neutral alternative spouse. It also replaced mother and father with "parent who gave birth" and "parent who did not give birth". <br/><br/>The change marks another major milestone for the island, which only introduced divorce in 2011. Only one lawmaker out of 67 in the Maltese parliament voted against the legislation. <br/><br/> Prime Minister Joseph Muscat hailed the vote and said Maltese society had reached an unprecedented level of maturity.<br/><br/>More than a dozen European countries have legalized same-sex marriage, all in the western part of the continent.