Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Santa Came Early To Mexico City


Just yesterday, as a gift to our Latino LGBT brothers and sisters, Mexico City lawmakers made the city the first in Latin America to legalize same-sex marriage and also to allow gay singles and couples to adopt. When the bill passed the capital's local assembly by a vote of 39-20, supporters yelled: "Yes, we could! Yes, we could!"

Yes, we could? Why does that sound familiar?

Mexico City Mayor Marcelo Ebrard is expected to sign the measure into law.

Mexico City's left-led assembly has made several decisions that were deemed unpopular in other parts of the deeply Roman Catholic country, including legalizing abortion in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. That decision sparked a backlash, with the majority of Mexico's other 32 states enacting legislation declaring life begins at conception.

The conservative Nation Action Party, which I think is Spanish for Republican, has vowed to challenge the gay marriage law in the courts. However, homosexuality is increasingly accepted in Mexico, with gay couples openly holding hands in parts of the capital and the annual gay pride parade drawing tens of thousands.

The new law changes the definition of marriage from a union of a man and a woman to the "free uniting of two people" and now allows for same-sex couples to adopt children, apply for bank loans together, inherit wealth and be included in the insurance policies of their spouse, rights they were denied under civil unions allowed in the city.

Only seven countries now allow gay marriages: Canada, Spain, South Africa, Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands and Belgium. Buenos Aires, Argentina's capital, was the first Latin American city to legalize same-sex civil unions in 2002; four other Argentine cities followed suit, as did Mexico City in 2007. Only Uruguay legalized civil unions nationwide.

Way to go, Mexico City!

3 comments:

  1. Another thing to like about Mexico :o)

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  2. Anonymous3:41 PM

    Very interesting about Mexico City. It is the most populous region in Mexico. It's up around 8.8 million people at the moment.

    Figure, gay folks are somewhere in a range of 4% to 10%. Lets say 7% so that means 616,000 gay people, and about 308,000 gay men, and 308,000 gay women.

    Consider, the populations of the urban centers of New England come out to 1,843,707 people. (Excludes Providence since we don't have marriage equality yet, also excludes Maine as it hasn't got any real urban centers.) Using the 7% figure - that's 129,059 gay people.

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