The Chilean Parliament voted on Tuesday, December 7 in favor of marriage between people of the same sex, validating a bill tabled in 2017. After its approval Tuesday in the Senate following numerous postponements of the vote, the Chamber of deputies immediately voted with 82 votes in favor, 20 against and two abstentions.
The measure has the backing of conservative President Sebastian Piñera, who must now enact the law. The latter will also allow all married couples to adopt children.
“I am extremely moved. I have a little trouble keeping my calm. It’s a race of several kilometers ”, said Isabel Amor, director of the Fundacion Iguales (which defends the rights of LGBT people), who attended the vote in the galleries of Parliament.
A constantly fought project
“With the approval of marriage for all, Chile has taken a historic and decisive step for the advancement and consolidation of the human rights of same-sex couples and same-sex families, who have all, without distinction, been discriminated against and raped since the origins of our country ”, wrote in a press release the Movement for Homosexual Integration and Liberation (Movilh), which has been defending for several years the authorization of marriage between people of the same sex in the country.
A few minutes before the express vote in the Chamber of Deputies, the Senate had approved the initiative by 21 votes in favor, eight against and three abstentions.
The text was tabled in Parliament in 2017 on the initiative of former Socialist President Michelle Bachelet, during her second term (2014-2018).
The project was constantly opposed by the most conservative bloc of the ruling Chilean right-wing, but nonetheless obtained a majority of ‘yes’ at every step of the process in an opposition-dominated parliament.
If marriage for all is authorized in some thirty countries in the world, Chile joins Costa Rica, Ecuador, Colombia, Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina and 14 of the 32 Mexican states in Latin America. .