It’s time to extend civil marriage to same-sex couples in Latin America

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  • Marriage is about family – about building a life together and caring for one another when it matters most.

    • Same-sex couples want to have a civil marriage for many of the same reasons as everyone else – to build a family together and promise to care for one another.
    • Think about how you would feel if your spouse got really sick and you couldn’t take time off to help take care of them— because your employer didn’t treat you as married. This is one of the many ways that excluding gay couples from marriage makes it harder for them to take care of each other.

    In Latin America, we don’t turn our backs on families.

    • No member of anyone’s family should face discrimination. That’s because every gay and lesbian person is part of someone’s family – someone’s son or daughter, brother or sister, cousin, aunt or uncle. No member of anyone’s family, family — gay or straight — should have to face discrimination where they live, where they work, or when they hope to marry the person they love.
    • Imagine if your own child was gay or lesbian. Wouldn’t you want them to be treated like everyone else in society?
    • 70% of people in Latin America live in a country where same-sex couples can marry. Allowing gay and lesbian people to share in civil marriage strengthens families and harms no one.

    Allowing gay and lesbian people to share in civil marriage strengthens families and harms no one.


    8
    countries in Latin America where same-sex couples can marry.

    Families are strengthened and no one is harmed when same-sex couples can share in civil marriage.

    71.3%
    of people in Latin America live in a country where same-sex couples can share in civil marriage

    Momentum is building for same-sex couples across Latin America to be able to share in marriage.


    The Inter-American Court of Human Rights was clear: Civil marriage is promised to all couples.

    • In 2018, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights issued a landmark advisory opinion affirming that civil marriage is a fundamental right of all people in the Americas—including gay and lesbian people. The judges said that all countries in the region “must recognise and guarantee all the rights that are derived from a family bond between people of the same sex”.
    • The ruling calls on all countries under the Court’s jurisdiction – including 20 Latin American countries that have yet to strike down marriage discrimination – to act without delay to join the 27 nations across the world that have extended marriage to same-sex couples.

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