Chile legalizes same-sex marriage

[NewYorkExpress]

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-59570576

Chile has approved a landmark law allowing same-sex marriage in the historically Catholic country.

The legislation, overwhelmingly approved by parliament on Tuesday, also enables gay couples to adopt children.

The bill was supported by President Sebastián Piñera, who has to sign it into law. But it has been criticised by members of his conservative coalition.

Chile's LGBT community has long pushed for the law, which has been stalled by Congress since 2017.

The Latin American country approved civil unions between same-sex couples in 2015, allowing them to register for a Civil Union Agreement (AUC) that gives some legal benefits.

But the bill to legalise same-sex marriage has languished in Congress for four years after it was presented by former left-leaning President Michelle Bachelet.


On Tuesday, the bill was passed in the lower house of parliament - shortly after its passage in the Senate - by 82 votes to 20. There were two abstentions.

[dead0man]

Don't the red avatars here hate Chile?  This must be confusing.  Why are Latin American conservatives so much more liberal than their left wing counterparts?

[CumbrianLefty]

The process was started by the former leftist President, but don't let that stop you eh.

[H.E. VOLODYMYR ZELENKSYY]

Don't the red avatars here hate Chile?  This must be confusing.  Why are Latin American conservatives so much more liberal than their left wing counterparts?

I’m genuinely confused as to what you’re getting at re: Chile (personally it’s one of my favorite countries), but I think it’d be nice to give you a serious answer anyway. In Argentina and Uruguay gay marriage was legalized by leftist (center-left) governments, and in all the other countries where it’s legal it’s been thanks to court rulings IIRC. The right-wing candidate in the current Chilean election opposes gay marriage, while the leftist supports it. In Costa Rica, their last election runoff was fought almost entirely on the issue of gay marriage, with the center-left candidate in favor and the right-wing evangelical against.

[afleitch]

Fantastic news.

[TheReckoning]

Another domino falls.

[dead0man]

Don't the red avatars here hate Chile?  This must be confusing.  Why are Latin American conservatives so much more liberal than their left wing counterparts?

I’m genuinely confused as to what you’re getting at re: Chile, but I think it’d be nice to give you a serious answer anyway. In Argentina and Uruguay gay marriage was legalized by leftist (center-left) governments, and in all the other countries where it’s legal it’s been thanks to court rulings IIRC. The right-wing candidate in the current Chilean election opposes gay marriage, while the leftist supports it. In Costa Rica, their last election runoff was fought almost entirely on the issue of gay marriage, with the center-left candidate in favor and the right-wing evangelical against.

fair enough (and apologies, that was probably more aggressive in tone than it should have been).

I had just looked at the wiki for gay marriage in Latin America and I saw a lot of countries red avatars love to hate on the "allows gay marriage" side and a lot of countries on the left that were noticeably absent from the list.  But what you're saying is it's just that conservative countries have strong courts that are generally respected by the political parties in the countries and previous left leaning govts had allowed it and no subsequent right leaning govt has successfully overturned it (has anyone tried or threatened to?)?  Is "machismo" still a much larger influence in their politics than "woke" is?

[H.E. VOLODYMYR ZELENKSYY]

Don't the red avatars here hate Chile?  This must be confusing.  Why are Latin American conservatives so much more liberal than their left wing counterparts?

I’m genuinely confused as to what you’re getting at re: Chile, but I think it’d be nice to give you a serious answer anyway. In Argentina and Uruguay gay marriage was legalized by leftist (center-left) governments, and in all the other countries where it’s legal it’s been thanks to court rulings IIRC. The right-wing candidate in the current Chilean election opposes gay marriage, while the leftist supports it. In Costa Rica, their last election runoff was fought almost entirely on the issue of gay marriage, with the center-left candidate in favor and the right-wing evangelical against.

fair enough (and apologies, that was probably more aggressive in tone than it should have been).

I had just looked at the wiki for gay marriage in Latin America and I saw a lot of countries red avatars love to hate on the "allows gay marriage" side and a lot of countries on the left that were noticeably absent from the list.  But what you're saying is it's just that conservative countries have strong courts that are generally respected by the political parties in the countries and previous left leaning govts had allowed it and no subsequent right leaning govt has successfully overturned it (has anyone tried or threatened to?)?  Is "machismo" still a much larger influence in their politics than "woke" is?

The Costa Rican election I mentioned actually revolved around precisely that issue. Shortly before the first round, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruled that state parties weren’t allowed to ban gay marriage (I’m unclear on how this works, because most parties…still do that, but I think it needs some sort of explicit incorporation from each country’s national judiciary, like what recently happened in Ecuador). In response to this, a far-right evangelical candidate shot up in the polls by promising to remove Costa Rica from the court’s jurisdiction and ignore the ruling. The other candidate in the runoff (from the incumbent center-left party) promised to accept the ruling and won in a landslide.

Regarding which countries red avatars love to hate, I don’t think I’m an expert on that but the most reliably conservative country that has legal gay marriage is (in my estimation, and from what I remember) Colombia, but I don’t know much about its judiciary. I think there is significant influence from machismo on a certain strain of the Latin American left (Chávez, Correa, Evo, to a certain extent Castillo), and “wokeness” (insofar as that’s a real thing there) is mostly (though not exclusively) confined to the wealthier countries of the Southern Cone (check out the Chilean election thread or look up “ñuñoísmo” for some thoughts on that), although I know Brazil has lots of racial discourse that A) I’m not extremely aware of and B) appears less influenced by the US left, although perhaps not entirely uninfluenced.

[kaoras]

Don't the red avatars here hate Chile?  This must be confusing.  Why are Latin American conservatives so much more liberal than their left wing counterparts?

I’m genuinely confused as to what you’re getting at re: Chile, but I think it’d be nice to give you a serious answer anyway. In Argentina and Uruguay gay marriage was legalized by leftist (center-left) governments, and in all the other countries where it’s legal it’s been thanks to court rulings IIRC. The right-wing candidate in the current Chilean election opposes gay marriage, while the leftist supports it. In Costa Rica, their last election runoff was fought almost entirely on the issue of gay marriage, with the center-left candidate in favor and the right-wing evangelical against.

fair enough (and apologies, that was probably more aggressive in tone than it should have been).

I had just looked at the wiki for gay marriage in Latin America and I saw a lot of countries red avatars love to hate on the "allows gay marriage" side and a lot of countries on the left that were noticeably absent from the list.  But what you're saying is it's just that conservative countries have strong courts that are generally respected by the political parties in the countries and previous left leaning govts had allowed it and no subsequent right leaning govt has successfully overturned it (has anyone tried or threatened to?)?  Is "machismo" still a much larger influence in their politics than "woke" is?

One has to keep in mind that in Chile is mostly the government the one who controls what does Congress votes on, thanks to the "urgencies" (they can say that Congress has to discuss x law in x number of days). This project, presented by the previous Bachelet government, had been languishing during Piñera's term until a few months ago when the Goverment suddenly decided to give it "urgency", in which was honestly, a pretty transparent attempt of Piñera to have at least one good thing to be remembered for (He is fairly obsessed with getting the kind of international recognition that Bachelet has).

I mean, I won't complain, but that's your explanation about why it passed under a right-wing government. So when people look up Piñera in a history book they see something else besides  "mass human rights violations, and social and political chaos"

[Hash]

Regarding which countries red avatars love to hate, I don’t think I’m an expert on that but the most reliably conservative country that has legal gay marriage is (in my estimation, and from what I remember) Colombia, but I don’t know much about its judiciary.

Colombia's Constitutional Court, which legalized same-sex marriage in 2016, after legalizing de facto civil unions in 2007 and confirming them as an explicit first step towards same-sex marriage in 2011, is famously one of the most activist courts (along with South Africa's Constitutional Court) in terms of protection of fundamental rights and freedoms, particularly for minorities, a bit less so today than in the golden days of the '90s. It has founded its decisions on the 1991 Constitution of Colombia, which is, in theory, a remarkably progressive document which guarantees broad protections of fundamental rights and civil liberties, including libre desarrollo de la personalidad (right to free development of one's personality). Article 42 of the constitution which states that "the family is the basic nucleus of society. It is constituted by natural or legal ties, through the free decision of a man and woman to contract matrimony or through a responsible decision to form a family" could be read to indicate that marriage is explicitly limited to opposite-sex couples, but the Court's progressive interpretation of the text and that article is that this doesn't imply the exclusion of the possibility of same-sex marriage (the principle being that "the express enunciation of a category does not exclude the existence of others").

The 2007 decision (ruling C-075) legalized same-sex de facto civil unions with property and pension rights, arguing that a 1990 law about these de facto unions (explicitly limited to opposite-sex couples) was discriminatory, although it still held to its prior views that there was no constitutional requirement to give equal treatment to homosexual vs. heterosexual couples. After 2007, the court's jurisprudence shifted towards gradual recognition of same-sex couples' rights on issues like healthcare, pensions, social security, civil law and criminal law.

In its 2011 decision (ruling C-577), the Court took another big step by ruling that the above civil unions are to be recognized as families (implying additional rights, e.g. inheritance), taking a very broad view of the meaning of 'family'. It said that it could not legislate on same-sex marriage and therefore urged Congress to legislate, by June 2013, to eliminate the 'deficit of protection' that the Court had found in its ruling. Congress, unsurprisingly, did not do so, which under the terms of that same ruling meant that, as of June 2013, same-sex couples could go before notaries to 'formalize and solemnize' their contractual relationship.

Several notaries and judges, however, refused to do so, so several couples denied marriage rights filed tutelas (a writ for the protection of fundamental rights that is the easiest and most popular way to protect one's rights in Colombia), as did opponents of same-sex marriage. This led the Constitutional Court to consider the issue at stake again, in its 2016 decision (SU-214). That decision extended full civil marriage rights to same-sex couples by building on its 2011 decision - arguing that same-sex marriage was not explicitly banned in the constitution, that article 42 of the constitution cannot be interpreted to exclude its possibility, that civil unions did not eliminate the 'deficit of protection' identified, and broadly that anyone can get a civil marriage regardless of their sexual orientation on the basis of the principles of human dignity, individual liberty and equality.

It is worth noting that Juan Manuel Santos' administration, after having been cautious (for political reasons) and not really intervening to push Congress to legislate in 2013, came around to publicly support same-sex marriage in 2015 (Santos himself publicly in 2014). The interior and justice ministers intervened before the Court to support same-sex marriage rights.

Álvaro Uribe's right-wing administration actually had a pretty contradictory attitude in terms of LGBT rights: certainly Uribe himself has never been a particularly pro-gay rights guy (he's used homophobic slang, like his famous le voy a dar en la cara marica, and in the 2018 campaign he famously avoided pronouncing the words gay or homosexual at all, instead calling them "non-heterosexuals"), and often (as president) used conservative rhetoric on issues like faith and family. However, in 2006, he did commit his government to supporting property rights for same-sex couples and he did have his government present a bill in that direction which was finally defeated at the very last second in 2007 (shortly afterwards, the Court ruled in its sentence C-075).

Uribe has always opposed same-sex marriage and adoption rights. In the wake of the 2016 ruling, he complained that the Court had taken over the role of the people and the legislator and should instead have sought a broad consensus that doesn't divide the country - but without marriage rights for same-sex couples, as he claims that this goes against natural laws. The uribista opposition had no qualms in fueling vile homophobia and using homophobic lies in its campaign against the peace agreement in 2016 - famously, a lot of opposition was directed at some educational material for kids (about treating everyone with respect etc.) and the openly gay education minister at the time (Gina Parody), which uribismo turned into "the FARC-communists will turn your kids gay". In 2017, he reiterated his opposition to gay marriage and said marriage should be reserved for heterosexual families "whose mission is the qualitative and quantitative preservation of the human species". Of course, the current government hasn't been able to do anything to 'abolish' gay marriage or adoption (and has pissed off its more radical right and Christian allies by not doing anything), it has also appointed notorious homophobes like Alejandro Ordóñez and Viviane Morales to diplomatic postings (granted, they're there because they needed to be thanked for their services but kept away from stuff that actually matters).

[TDAS04]

Excellent.