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MEXICO: Capital Joins Global Trend Towards Same-Sex Unions

Diego Cevallos

MEXICO CITY, Mar 16 2007 (IPS) - Some 250 gay and lesbian couples flocked to the civil registry in Mexico City to apply for the legalisation of their relationship as soon as a new law on domestic partnerships went into effect Friday.

In the region, Mexico City thus followed on the heels of the capital of Argentina and the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul, and even the northern Mexican state of Coahuila, where same-sex civil unions are legal. There are also bills under consideration in Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica and Uruguay.

“This is a great achievement by civil society, and marks one more step forward in the process of democratisation in Mexico, and in Latin America as a whole, where there is a great clamour for recognition and acceptance of sexual diversity,” gay rights activist Manuel Velásquez, who heads the local Alternative Party, told IPS.

Although the new Mexico City legislation was dubbed the “gay law” by opponents, it actually will allow any couple, whether homosexual or heterosexual, to enter into formal domestic partnerships, thereby acquiring inheritance and alimony rights and the possibility of obtaining benefits as couples, like bank loans and health and life insurance.

The law will not, however, allow the couples to adopt children, a right that has been achieved in Guam, Andorra, Belgium, the Netherlands, Sweden, South Africa, Spain and the United Kingdom.

Mexican activists see countries like the Netherlands and Spain as global leaders in terms of legislation on sexual diversity.

In Latin America, the pioneer in same-sex civil unions was Buenos Aires, the capital of Argentina, where they became legal in 2002. The Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul followed suit, in 2004.

Authorities in the Brazilian city of Sao Paulo later ruled that homosexual couples can adopt children, while in Rio de Janeiro, the city government granted public employees who are in stable same-sex relationships the same rights as married heterosexual civil servants.

In 2006, a Brazilian Supreme Court decision stated that same-sex couples were “de facto” domestic partners.

Draft laws are also being considered by the legislatures of several Latin American countries.

These recent changes are due to the actions of civil society and its call for “building a more democratic world,” said Velásquez, whose Alternative Party is represented in the federal and state legislatures.

But it has been an uphill battle in the region.

Luiz Mott, a professor at the Federal University of Bahía and founder and president of the Gay Group in that Brazilian state, recalled that “until the mid-1990s, homosexuality was still considered a crime in Chile, Ecuador, Cuba, Nicaragua and Puerto Rico.”

“At the start of the 21st century, there are still laws against sodomy in Puerto Rico and Nicaragua,” he added.

The new Mexico City law is the product of more than 10 years of struggle by activists. It almost went into effect in 2003, but was blocked by then mayor Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the left’s presidential candidate in last year’s elections, who argued at the time that the issue should be put to broad citizen consultation.

The Mexico City legislature, which is dominated by López Obrador’s leftist Democratic Revolution Party (PRD), finally approved the bill in November, and shortly afterwards then mayor Alejandro Encinas signed it into law.

The new mayor who took office in December, Marcelo Ebrard of the PRD, said he fully backs the domestic partnership law.

Studies estimate that some two million of Mexico’s 26 million households are headed by, or made up of, same-sex couples, and that between five and 10 million of the country’s 103 million people are homosexual or bisexual.

The Citizen Commission Against Homophobic Hate Crimes reports that in Mexico an average of 100 people are year are murdered in instances of gay-bashing, with one-third of the murders occurring in the capital.

“With this law that has entered into force in the capital, we have advanced towards the construction of a democratic society, in which the state cannot and should not intervene in people’s decisions about their sexual lifestyles,” said Velásquez.

The Catholic Church, conservative groups and the governing National Action Party (PAN) are staunchly opposed to the laws in effect in Mexico City and the state of Coahuila – which is governed by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) – but were unable to block them.

Between 1989 and 2002, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Iceland and Finland approved laws granting same-sex couples rights similar to those derived from marriage. Similar or more limited laws have also been adopted in Israel, Greenland, Hungary, France, Germany, Portugal, Croatia, Austria, Luxembourg, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Andorra, the Czech Republic, Slovenia and Switzerland.

Same-sex marriage, meanwhile, is legal in the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Canada and South Africa, as well as in the U.S. state of Massachusetts.