MEXICO: Green Light for Gay Marriage, Adoption in Capital

It seems increasingly that hardly a month goes by without some other nation or foreign municipality passing legislation to recognize either same sex civil unions or full same sex marriage rights. As has been the case for some time now, the USA - the alleged land of the free with freedom of religion for all - lags behind even what until recently what might have been considered third world countries. One cannot help but wonder whether or not foreigners view the USA as a huge fraud which fails to practice what it preaches and disregards the promise of full equality under the civil laws to all citizens. Personally, I find the USA's hypocrisy to be embarrassing. Not surprisingly, in the vanguard against legal equality is the Roman Catholic Church in Mexico. Here are some highlights from IPSNews on the development in Mexico City - a city that has more residents than the majority of states in the USA:
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The Mexican capital's local parliament has authorised marriage between same-sex partners, a measure covering the eight million people in Mexico City proper. Adoption by gay couples will also be allowed. With a tally of 39 votes in favour, 20 against and five abstentions, the leftwing Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) used its majority in the parliament to approve changes to the local civil code, so that marriage is no longer defined as the union of a man and a woman, but as "the free uniting of two people."
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"We want to correct the exclusion of millions of people from the rights we have established in law," lawmaker José Muñoz of the PRD, the governing party in the nation's capital, told the plenary session of the municipal parliament.
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The rightwing National Action Party (PAN), which governs Mexico at the national level but is in opposition in the Mexico City municipal government, attempted to delay approval of the bill by proposing a referendum in the capital on same-sex marriage. But the PRD rejected the motion. The reforms will enter into force after the city government has promulgated the new law, and a further period of 45 working days has elapsed. The PAN intends to challenge the bill in the Supreme Court on the grounds that it is unconstitutional.
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A survey of Mexico City residents by the newspaper El Universal found that 50 percent of respondents were in favour of the legal reform, compared with 38 percent who were against and 12 percent who did not answer. Among the men interviewed, 51 percent backed the change in the law, and 49 percent of women were also in favour. The Catholic Church vigorously attacked the bill. The Archdiocese of Mexico, in the words of its spokesman Hugo Valdemar, called it "immoral."

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About 20 percent of the Mexican population of 107 million have or have had same-sex partners, according to the Mexican Society for Holistic Humanistic Sexology (SOMESHU), a non-governmental organisation devoted to spreading knowledge about sexuality issues. There are at least 10 types of family in Mexico, according to the state National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI).