Mexico's top court to vote on gay marriage in Yucatan state

Wednesday, 24 February 2021 13:07 GMT

ARCHIVE PICTURE: A view of The Mexican Supreme Court in Mexico City, Mexico August 16, 2017. REUTERS/Carlos Jasso

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If the Supreme Court orders Yucatan state to legalize same-same marriage, other states across Mexico could follow

By Christine Murray

MEXICO CITY, Feb 24 (Openly) - Mexico's top court is due to vote Wednesday whether to order the state of Yucatan to legalize gay marriage, a move that would open the door to similar judgments elsewhere in the country.

The Supreme Court in 2015 said that banning gay marriage was unconstitutional, but many states have yet to amend their laws. Some allow same-sex unions while in others gay and lesbian couples must ask a judge to approve their application to marry.

The state Congress in southeastern Yucatan rejected a 2019 initiative to allow equal marriage - a decision that LGBT+ rights group Colectivo por la Proteccion de Todas las Familias en Yucatan (Colectivo PTFY) is now challenging.

"It would be a historic, social revindication after more than 20 years of different organizations ... fighting for this cause in the Yucatan," Kalycho Escoffie, a lawyer with the collective, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

An increasing number of countries in traditionally Catholic Latin America have legalized same-sex marriage. Gay couples can now marry in Costa Rica, Argentina, Ecuador, Brazil, Colombia, Uruguay and in some states in Mexico.

If the Supreme Court decides on Wednesday that Yucatan must legalize same-sex unions, similar cases could be brought in the remaining 11 of Mexico's 31 states that do not allow gay marriage, Escoffie said.

LGBT+ people in Mexico face discrimination in access to education, work and health and families with same-sex partners who cannot marry are blocked from a range of rights and social benefits.

About 3% of people surveyed told Mexico's statistics body in 2017 that they were not heterosexual, although government anti-discrimination body CONAPRED said the true number is likely to be higher.

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(Reporting by Christine Murray; Editing by Katy Migiro and Hugo Greenhalgh Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers the lives of people around the world who struggle to live freely or fairly. Visit http://news.trust.org)

Openly is an initiative of the Thomson Reuters Foundation dedicated to impartial coverage of LGBT+ issues from around the world.

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