Mexico City Passes Marriage Equality

Wow! I guess following in the footsteps of the District of Columbia last week, the Distrito Federal (also known as Mexico City) has also passed marriage equality legislation.

The leftist-dominated legislature of this massive city of about 20 million people turned aside opposition from the influential Roman Catholic Church and ended lively debate to approve the measure by a 39-20 vote. Mayor Marcelo Ebrard is expected to sign the bill into law.

"Mexico City has put itself in the vanguard," said legislator Victor Hugo Romo. "This is a historic day."

Mexico City's initiative goes further than any other in Latin America by rewriting the law to redefine marriage as a "free union between two people" not only between a man and a woman. It gives homosexual couples the same rights as heterosexual pairs, including the right to adopt, inherit, obtain joint housing loans and share insurance policies.

Several countries, most of them in Europe, and a handful of U.S. states have legalized same-sex marriage in recent years, and the issue is being hotly debated in parts of predominantly Catholic Latin America. Uruguay was the first Latin American nation to recognize same-sex unions, as well as adoptions by gay couples, and some cities in Argentina have adopted similar laws.

It's interesting that the capital city of both United States and Mexico have adopted marriage equality in the last two weeks.