Will Columbia Out Pace the USA on Gay Marriage?

France, Uruguay and now New Zealand have all but finalized gay marriage within the last week.  Meanwhile, the USA sits on its proverbial thumbs and the U.S. Supreme Court likely dithers trying to find a way to dodged addressing the fact that equality under the law remains a sham in this country so long as LGBT citizens are denied equal rights.  Making the situation even more embarrassing for American hubris is the fact that now Columbia may surge ahead of it in granting full equality under the law.   Why, because Columbia's highest court ruled 2 years ago that the Colombian legislature had until June 20, 2013 to fix the unequal treatment afforded to LGBT citizens.  That's right, 2 years ago.  The Columbia Law and Business Post has details on a vote to be held by the Columbia Senate today.  Here are details:

Why Is This Debate Happening Now?  The Colombian Constitutional Court issued a ruling in 2011 (Sentencia C577/11) that requires the Congress to act by June 20, 2013, or else same-sex couples can present themselves to legal notaries to contract for their legal rights. The Court ruled that same-sex couples have equal legal rights to found a family, but there is a “deficit of legal protection” for such couples under current law, and ordered the Congress to eliminate that deficit by June 20, 2013. The Court previously ruled that the right given to heterosexual couples to a legally recognized non-marital union must be accorded to same-sex couples.

Art. 13 of the Constitution guarantees equality before the law. (This is also a human right guaranteed by the American Convention on Human Rights, which is binding on Colombia. See more about this below.) To allow marriage equality is to reconcile the marriage and equality clauses; to prohibit same-sex marriage is to ignore the equality clause altogether and to invent an intention for the family clause that never existed.

Marriage Equality is Good For Business. In the United States Supreme Court, a large group of well-known employers filed a brief arguing in favor of marriage equality. They include, among others:

Abercrombie and Fitch, Adobe Systems Incorporated, Advanced Micro Devices Inc., Aetna, Alaskan Airlines, Alcoa, American International Group, Apple, Cisco Systems, Clorox, eBay, Facebook, Goldman Sachs, Google, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Levi Strauss & Co., Marsh and McLennan Companies, Morgan Stanley, NCR Corporation, Nike, Office Depot, Oracle, Qualcomm, McGraw-Hill Companies, Tiffany and Co., Xerox

These firms all have experience as employers being forced to implement separate systems of employment and benefits for same-sex employees and their partners, which offend their corporate policies of equality and advancement and competition based on merit alone. Those policies exist for a reason: to attract and promote the best workforce and clientele. Simply put, bigotry is bad for business.

Same-Sex Couples Are No Worse and No Better Parents   There is a “scientific consensus” by sociologists, pediatricians, doctors, pyschiatrists, psychologists, and social workers that the sexual orientation of parents has no effect on the sexual orientation of children or on children’s aptitude, happiness, or any other measure of performance. The leading, most respected organizations in these fields presented their research findings and official positions to the Supreme Court of the United States in favor of marriage equality,

Marriage Equality Is Important to Colombia’s Remarkable Progress  Colombia has made a remarkable comeback from a nearly failed narco-state, and in so many respects is a leader in Latin America.  The Americas, in turn, are in the vanguard when it comes to marriage equality. Canada, Argentina, and now Uruguay permit same-sex couples to marry, as do many states in the US, Mexico, and Brazil. In Mexico and Brazil, same-sex marriages are recognized nationally. Altogether (see the table at the end of this article), approximately 35% of the population of the Americas lives in a nation or political subdivision that permits same-sex couples to marry, and another 30% lives where same-sex marriages from elsewhere are officially recognized. That’s almost 70% of the Americas where same-sex marriage is okay.

Will Colombia be a forward-looking and fair country, or retrograde, unfair, and even violent?   .   .   .   .  If it fails to align with the “first world” countries and major multinational corporations supporting marriage equality, Colombia will marginalize itself as a backward-facing country whose progress has halted. 

The BBC reports on today's vote to delay the Senate decision until April 23rd:

The Colombian Senate decided to postpone the second debate on a draft law that would allow marriage between people of the same sex until next Tuesday, April 23.

The decision was taken by 35 votes in favor and 28 against, once the television broadcast of the debate was interrupted by "prior commitments" and while in the outskirts of Congress demonstrated groups both for and against the project.

By order of the Constitutional Court of Colombia, the Colombian Parliament has until June 20 to legislate on the subject.

Otherwise, always according to the Court ruling, same-sex couples could go to the notaries and courts competent to "legalize and solemnize" ties, although it is unclear whether such unions would have a range of marriage.

The questions posed in the Columbia Law and Business Journal apply to the USA and sadly, I have more faith in Columbia getting it right than America which continues to subvert its own Constitution by allowing religious based hate and bigotry trump the Constitution itself.