Governor Aristoteles Sandoval signed Jalisco’s Ley de Libre Convivencia into law Friday, November 1, just hours after the State Congress had passed the bill the night before.
Having now been published in the Official Journal of Jalisco, the legislation that enhances same-sex couples’ rights to inheritance and social security by allowing two or more adults to enter into a notarized civil contract will take effect after 60 days on January 1, 2014.
Opponents of the bill called in vain for Sandoval to veto its passage late last Thursday, but the governor maintained his support for the initiative introduced by his party, the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), and the leftist Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD).The law does not permit same-sex couples to marry and explicitly states that they cannot adopt children.
Nonetheless, local conservative groups fear that the legislation paves the way for such developments. During Sunday Mass, Cardinal Francisco Robles Ortega, the archbishop of Guadalajara, warned the Catholic community to remain alert and keep defending the sanctity of marriage, because “we know this isn’t going to stop here. There are groups that will continue to be active upon seeing that they did not get everything they proposed.”
Meanwhile, Guillermo Martinez Mora, a legislator from the right-wing National Action Party (PAN), reacted to the bill’s passage with a rabid, unsubstantiated rant, claiming that “children living with homosexuals have mental and physical problems and use more drugs.” Even with its adoption clause, he called the initiative “detrimental to the development of children.”