Coahuila First Mexican State to Legalize Gay Marriage

On Monday, September 1, Coahuila became the first Mexican state to approve gay marriage through its legislature. Gay Star News reports that in a 19-3 vote, lawmakers approved 40 changes to the state's civil code, to extend all marital rights to gay couples, including adoption and social security benefits.

"This is a great step forward," said leftist congressman Samuel Acevedo, who approved the changes in March. "What's important is that we changed the tradition system of marriage."

Acevedo faced opposition from the Catholic Church as well as conservative groups, but Acevedo was not deterred.

"The way it worked before, it infringed on the rights of homosexual people and now they will get their rights... everything which comes with marriage," he said.

Gov. Ruben Moreira Valdez of Coahuila backed the voted, and congratulated the state congress on Twitter. Coahuila was the first state to legalize civil unions for gays in 2007. This current legislation could go into effect as early as next week.

The San Diego Gay & Lesbian News reports that married gay couples will also be ensured of social security.

"It is important that we change the traditional system of marriage. Currently the code says that marriage is the union between a man and a woman for the purpose of procreation and now will say that marriage is the union between two people with the possibility of procreation or adoption," Acevedo said, according to Vanguardia.

They report that Mexico is slowly but surely going through a long political process to legalize gay marriage nationwide. Although the nation's high court has declared that marriage equality should be the law of the land, it takes a protracted set of lawsuits in each individual state or the passage of a law by a state legislature.

And LGBTQ Nation notes that the Same-sex marriage is also legal in Mexico's Federal District, aka Mexico City, and in the state of Quintana Roo, where the secretary of state determined in 2012 that the state's civil code was also gender neutral.

Mexico's Supreme Court ruled in 2010 that legally performed same-sex marriages must be recognized in all 31 states throughout the country, though the ruling did not require states to allow same-sex marriages to be performed within their jurisdiction.