Same-sex marriage in Chile reaches decisive moment in Congress

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The full Senate has the last word on the bill. Still, it must first be reviewed in the Constitution Committee of the upper house which could delay the final vote or even postpone it for another day.

“This bill must become law right now. There are no more excuses to continue extending the discussion in Congress, keeping hundreds of families waiting anxiously,” said Isabel Amor, executive director of Fundación Iguales.

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The bill seeks to equalize rights and obligations regardless of the sex of the people in the marriage.

To this end, it changes the concept of marriage between a man and a woman to apply without distinction of sex.

Currently, the only legal tool to legally unite same-sex couples is the Civil Union Agreement – approved in 2015 – that allows access to almost all the rights stipulated by marriage but denies the possibility of adoption and the rights of filiation of children for same-sex couples, discrimination that with this project would change.

“Love does not discriminate, but the law does. In Chile, we are not recognized as a family; equal marriage is a vindication of years of living as second-class citizens,” said Lorena Grez, who participated on Monday in the delivery of 20,000 signatures in favor of the bill’s approval.

If approved, Chile would become the ninth country in the Americas to legalize equal marriage after Canada, the United States, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Colombia, Brazil, Uruguay, and Argentina. In Mexico, it is legal in 14 of the country’s 32 states.

YEARS OF WAITING

The bill entered Parliament in 2017, during former socialist president Michelle Bachelet’s second term (2014-2018). The current Chilean president, the conservative Sebastián Piñera, decided to speed up its passage through Congress after a surprise announcement in his last public account on June 1 of this year.

It was approved in the Senate on July 21 and in the Chamber of Deputies on November 23, in both chambers with a large majority and always with the opposition of the more conservative ruling right-wing.

But changes introduced in some articles of the bill forced a third and final legislative procedure.

“It is fundamental to advance in dignity with equal marriage because love cannot be conditioned,” said the president of the Senate, Christian Democrat Ximena Rincón, on Monday after giving her support to several organizations that fight for the rights of the LGTBIQ+ community.

EAGER TO GET MARRIED

91.8% of those consulted and who had signed the Civil Union Agreement indicated that they would cancel this procedure to get married.

Regarding the four years of stagnation of the project in the Parliament, 91.9% consider that “it has been delayed in an unjustified way.”

ELECTORAL CAMPAIGN

The project also affects the campaign for the second round of the presidential elections on December 19, when the conservative José Antonio Kast and the leftist Gabriel Boric will face each other.

Boric, deputy and former student leader of 35 years and candidate of the alliance I approve Dignity – Frente Amplio and Communist Party- defends marriage between same-sex couples in his electoral program to equalize rights. As a deputy, he voted in favor of the bill.

Meanwhile, lawyer Kast, 55 years old, candidate of the Republican Party, proposes in point 249 of his program “to prevent children from being forcibly indoctrinated about different ideologies”, and opposes the “approval of ‘homosexual marriage’ and the option of adoption, protecting the ‘best interest of the child, which is constituted by the right of every child to have a father and a mother.”

Source: AFP

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