07/22/2021 3:09 AM
Clarín.com
World
Updated 07/22/2021 3:09 AM
The Senate of Chile approved equal marriage on Wednesday, which is now being discussed in the
Chamber of Deputies
, in what represents another step on the road to equal rights for homosexual couples in a country that is increasingly moving away from conservatism. .
This advance, still pending to be ratified in the Lower House, where
there is
still
no date for the start of its processing
, managed to speed up after the impulse given a few weeks ago by the right-wing president Sebastián Piñera, even despite the fact that this Wednesday Most of the senators in the government coalition opposed the implementation of the new law.
"
The time for equal marriage has come
," Piñera said in his public account before Congress on June 1, in an announcement that surprised his entire coalition, with which he had not previously spoken.
The regulations of the project that regulate equal marriage and those related to filiation were validated by
a comfortable majority
.
The project entered Parliament
in 2017
, following an initiative by former Socialist President Michelle Bachelet (2014-2018).
During his government, a
Civil Union Agreement
was approved
,
which allows homosexual couples to access almost all the rights stipulated by marriage, but
denies the possibility of adoption
for same-sex couples, something that with this project would change.
"When the project is approved, first and second category couples will cease to exist in our country
," Oscar Rementería,
spokesman for
the Homosexual Integration and Liberation Movement
(Movilh),
explained in a dialogue with AFP
.
The vote was marked by
the opposition of the most conservative sectors of the ruling party
, reluctant to consider homosexual couples marriage, and by the request at the last minute for a separate vote on the filiation rules, in an attempt - according to the Movilh - to " remove homoparental adoption and filiation from the law of equal marriage, "an issue that ultimately did not prosper.
"Marriage in its essence is the union between a man and a woman with the possibility of procreating, while same-sex relationships have a different category, because
they do not have that option of procreating,
" the senator argued against the initiative. Manuel José Ossandón, from the official Renovación Nacional.
The project seeks to
equalize rights and obligations
regardless of the sex of the people who make up the marriage and for this the first thing that changes is that the concept "marriage" is applied without distinction.
"The bill of equal marriage really what it looks for is that the current traditional marriage can be extended to couples of the same sex,
with the same name, the same obligations and with the same rights
. Without any type of distinction, they are couples of different sex or of the same sex, "said the Movilh spokesman.
If the new regulations are ratified, in addition to equalizing rights in matters of marriage, it will also allow the
adoption and parental affiliation of children to
be guaranteed for homosexual couples.
Rementería indicated that this represents a change for same-sex couples, but also for their future children, since with the current Civil Union Agreement it is not possible to "apply to the field of
adoptions in family courts
, because the law does not It recognizes them as a couple even though the State does. "
This change will also apply when registering the child's parents or legal guardians, who until now
could not be both
.
"There is a problem with the filiation rights between children and parents, that is, the relationship that a boy or a girl may have in order to have
a father, a mother, two fathers or two mothers,
" said Rementería.
During the processing of the project, the main debate centered on the end of discrimination.
"Love", "freedom," equality "or" tolerance "
were concepts that were repeated among the senators, who for the most part valued positively this step forward in civil rights in Chile, a country that only in 2004 adopted a law divorce and in 2015 established therapeutic abortion.
"We want to advance to a country
that plays with other values
, that advances in justice and in eradicating all forms of discrimination," said the president of the Upper House, Senator of the Christian Democracy Yasna Provoste, who voted in favor of the project.
With information from AFP.
DB
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