Venezuela’s president has called on his country to take up the issue of same-sex marriage following the Pope’s comments endorsing civil unions.
On Thursday, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro urged the National Assembly to consider the passage of a marriage equality bill when the legislature convenes for its next term in January. The 57-year-old leader, who has held the presidency since 2013, cited the Pope’s remarks from a forthcoming documentary, Francesco, in which he claimed that LGBTQ+ people “have the right to be in a family.”
“I have friends and acquaintances who are very happy with what the Pope said yesterday,” Maduro claimed during a meeting with leadership in the ruling Socialist Party, as was first reported by Reuters. “I will leave that task, the task of LGBT marriage, to the next National Assembly.”
Parliamentary elections are scheduled in Venezuela in December. The opposition party coalition, which currently holds the largest share of seats, has already vowed to boycott the vote, claiming that Maduro plans to rig it in his favor.
Currently, the LGBTQ+ community in Venezuela has very few rights and protections on a national scale. A constitutional amendment passed in 1999 defines marriage as “between a man a woman,” and same-sex couples also remain banned from adopting children. Conversion therapy remains legal, and the country’s employment discrimination laws only pertain to sexual orientation, not gender identity.
And yet Venezuela is one of several South American countries poised to take a major step forward in the wake of the Pope’s historic endorsement of civil unions, which marks the first time a pontiff has expressed support for LGBTQ+ relationship recognition.
Chile is preparing to finally make progress on its long-delayed marriage equality bill, which has been in limbo since it was first proposed by former president Michele Bachelet in 2017. Twenty-seven articles of the legislation have been approved by the Constitution Commission in Chile’s Senate, and 27 more are awaiting ratification.
Should either country legalize the freedom to marry, they would be the sixth in South America to do so, following Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, and Uruguay.
Others could be soon to follow. In addition to the Pope’s declaration that same-sex couples are “children of God” who deserve to be “legally covered,” the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruled in January 2018 that its member countries must treat LGBTQ+ couples “without discrimination,” thus entitling same-sex partners to full marriage rights under the law.
Although that verdict applies to more than 20 countries in Latin and South America, including Bolivia, Paraguay, and Peru, few have made substantial progress over the past two years. An outlier is Costa Rica, which became the first Latin American country to legalize marriage equality in May.
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