Mexico’s president, Enrique Peña Nieto, has called for the nationwide legalization of same-sex marriage, announcing that he had signed initiatives proposing that marriage equality be written into the country’s constitution and federal civil code.
The announcement, which coincides with the National Day Against Homophobia in Mexico, came after Nieto met at a roundtable with representatives of LGBT groups.
In a series of tweets, Nieto wrote, in Spanish, that he had “listened to their ideas and proposals”, adding that he had “reiterated the commitment of [the government of Mexico] to combat all forms of discrimination, including sexual preferences.”
Hoy, en el Día Nacional de la Lucha contra la Homofobia, me reuní con representantes de colectivos LGBTI. Escuché sus ideas y propuestas.
— Enrique Peña Nieto (@EPN) May 17, 2016
Reiteré el compromiso del @gobmx de combatir todo tipo de discriminación, incluyendo la motivada por preferencias sexuales #SinHomofobia
— Enrique Peña Nieto (@EPN) May 17, 2016
He also changed his avatar on social media to include the rainbow flag.
Same-sex marriage has been legal in some parts of Mexico for some time; it was legalized first by ordinance in Mexico City – the first Latin American jurisdiction to do so – and the law was then upheld by the supreme court in August 2010.
In 2011, the first same-sex marriages occurred in the state of Quintana Roo after it was discovered that the state’s legal code did not explicitly forbid it. Those were annulled by the governor in April 2012, but that annulment was overturned almost immediately by Quintana Roo’s secretary of state.
Currently, only three of Mexico’s 31 states – Campeche, Coahuila and Nayarit – plus Mexico City have passed laws enacting marriage equality, and four more have de facto marriage equality by either gubernatorial decree, as in the case of Chihuahua, or decisions by the secretary of state or director of civil registry.
In 2015, the country’s supreme court published a ruling which said that defining marriage as only between a man and a woman was discriminatory, which was a kind of de facto legalization.
But this judicial ruling did not invalidate state bans – same-sex marriage is still banned by the province of Yucatán, for example – meaning couples that want to marry in states where it is still illegal can do so, but only after obtaining a court injunction.
