Gay Couples May Adopt Children In Mexico City, Supreme Court Says

August 17, 2010 By Staff

A protest in Madrid in support of Mexico City's gay marriage law.

Today in Latin America

Top Story — Mexico’s Supreme Court upheld on Monday a law allowing same-sex couples to adopt children in the country’s capital.

The contested provision was contained within a law legalizing gay marriage in Mexico City that passed in December. Mexico’s federal government challenged the constitutionality of allowing same-sex couples to adopt children, arguing that Mexico’s Constitution specified a family as consisting of a male and female parents, and saying that gay adoption would infringe on the rights of children, according to Spanish daily El País.

The federal government’s arguments were rejected by a 9-2 vote, which came two weeks after the Court voted by a similarly wide margin to uphold Mexico City’s gay marriage law.

While gay marriages and adoptions by gay couples have only been legalized in Mexico City, the Court’s ruling means that all of the country’s 31 states must recognize the marriages and adoptions enacted under Mexico city law.

The Court’s ruling is sure to spark controversy, as the rest of Mexico does not necessarily share the capital’s open attitudes toward sexuality. The Catholic church, in particular, has loudly opposed both gay marriage and adoption by gay couples.

“I don’t know if any of you would like it if you were adopted by a pair of lesbians or a pair of faggots (maricones). I think not,” the cardinal of Guadalajara Juan Sandoval Íñiguez told reporters on Sunday, according to El País.

The Supreme Court Justices unanimously passed a motion criticizing Sandoval Íñiguez’s comments and called upon the country to avoid discrimination.

Just Published at the Latin America News Dispatch

As politicians debate the possibility of changing the 14th amendment, which guarantees citizenship to all those born in this country, the Pew Hispanic Center releases figures detailing the number of children born in the U.S. to undocumented immigrants.

Headlines from the Western Hemisphere

North America

Republican candidates hoping to end Democratic dominance of the Alabama Legislature unveiled an agenda Monday that includes passing an Arizona-style immigration law and prohibits the federal government from compelling any Alabamian to participate in a health care system.
The mayor of Santiago, a town on the outskirts of Monterrey, Mexico, was kidnapped by gunmen overnight, Nuevo León state officials said at a news conference Monday.

Caribbean

A group of intellectuals and politicians has called on France to repay 17bn euros (22bn USD) “extorted” from Haiti in the 19th Century.
The government of the Bahamas says undocumented Haitian immigrants no longer have a free pass to stay in the country.
Cuba is opening stores in the countryside where farm supplies are being sold freely for the first time as the Communist government moves to reform and revitalize long-centralized agriculture, farmers said.

Central America

A Taiwanese company in 1999 paid then-president Miguel Angel Rodríguez $1.4 million to get a foothold in the country, a witness said Monday in the corruption trial of the former leader.
A woman and her three small children were murdered over the weekend inside their house in a rural community in western Guatemala, according to the National Civilian Police.

Andes

A Colombian airliner carrying 127 people crashed and broke into pieces while landing on the Caribbean resort island San Andres on Monday during a storm, but only one person died in what police called “a miracle.”
Venezuela and neighboring Trinidad and Tobago signed an energy accord on Monday allowing both countries to develop natural gas along their maritime border, Venezuelan Energy Minister Rafael Ramírez said.
Venezuela has moved the women’s baseball world championship tournament to militarised stadiums outside Caracas after a Hong Kong player was shot during a game, prompting an outcry over the city’s violent crime epidemic.
American activist Lori Berenson has apologized for aiding leftist rebels and asked a Peruvian court to let her remain free on parole.
Bolivian protesters ended more than two weeks of demonstrations on Monday that disrupted operations at two of the world’s top silver deposits, and Japan’s Sumitomo said it had resumed work at its halted mine.

Southern Cone

Argentina is developing satellite-launching capability, with Chinese help.
Ruling party candidate Dilma Rousseff extended her lead to 11 percentage points over her rival José Serra in a October’s presidential elections in Brazil, according to a an Ibope poll released Monday.
Iran will not send a woman who had faced death by stoning on an adultery conviction to Brazil, which has offered her asylum, the President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in a TV interview on Monday.
Chilean flagship airline LAN’s shares jumped 7.9 percent on the blue-chip Ipsa index just minutes into the Monday trading session, on the back of its planned merger with Brazilian carrier TAM.
Uruguayan wines, little known in the United States, may be getting ready to make a splash here.

Image: Purkinje17 @ Flickr.

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