The LGBT community in Jalisco has hailed a landmark ruling by Mexico’s Supreme Court that determine state laws that prohibit same-sex marriage to be “discriminatory” and “unconstitutional.”
While the high court’s latest intervention on the issue does not abolish local statues that only permit heterosexual marriage, it paves the way for couples to successfully pursue amparos (injunctions), since lower court district judges will now be duty bound to abide by the Supreme Court’s ruling.
Thanks to a district court ruling, in October 2013 a lesbian couple fro Guadalajara became the first and only same-sex couple to wed in Jalisco. Since then, LGBT groups say more than two dozen gay couples have applied for marriage licenses but have been refused by registrars who justify their decision based on local codes that determine marriage can only be between a man and a woman.
The ruling is the latest in a series of decisions taken by the Supreme Court over the past four years that seem to be inching the nation closer to marriage equality in line with Latin American neighbors Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay.
The Supreme Court judges last week ruled that laws that make the goal of marriage “procreation” or “the celebration of the union of a man and a woman” were unconstitutional.
A “major step forward” was how the Jalisco gay and lesbian activist group Codise described the ruling.
Mexico City’s left-wing government passed legislation permitting same-sex marriage in 2009 but few other states have followed suit.
In some conservative strongholds, including Jalisco, groups led by the Roman Catholic church have been openly hostile to any attempt to allow gay couples to marry.
Cardinal Francisco Robles, the archbishop of Guadalajara, said the church could never change its position that marriage can only be between a man and a woman – reasoning he said that was based on “anthropology, sociology and philosophy.”
Following the ruling, calls were made this week for the incoming Jalisco legislature to assume its obligations and quickly revise the state’s civil code to permit marriages between people of any gender.
Some legal experts, however, said this is unnecessary given that same-sex couples are now guaranteed to win their injunctions, since judges hearing cases will be obliged to use the Supreme Court ruling as their criteria.
Meanwhile, a public petition condemning the court’s decision is gaining signatures at www.citizengo.org.