Colombia’s LGBT Marriage 10th Anniversary!
Colombia
Bogotá, Colombia June 28 (EFE).-
Colombia commemorated the 10th anniversary of the legalization of same-sex marriage on Sunday with a symbolic ceremony at the National Museum in Bogotá, where organizations advocating for sexual diversity used the occasion to celebrate the achievements made and call for those rights not to be rolled back amid the new political landscape.
“The first challenge is to respect the principle of non-regression in human rights, in other words, the gains we’ve made cannot be reversed,” Marcela Sánchez, director of the NGO Colombia Diversa, told EFE, referring to the challenges facing the community with the arrival of the new far-right government.
Adriana González and Marcela Rojas, the first women to marry under same-sex marriage laws in Colombia, presented Museum Director Katia González with the legal complaint that Colombia Diversa filed in 2010, an instrumental document in the Constitutional Court’s recognition of the right of same-sex couples to enter into civil marriage in Colombia through Ruling SU-214 of 2016.
Sánchez recalled that the organization pursued this legal strategy after more than 18 attempts to pass a law recognizing the rights of same-sex couples failed in Congress.
“Our only remaining option was the judicial route through the Constitutional Court, and we had to be very precise in our arguments,” she explained, noting that even the then-Office of the Attorney General had deployed a strategy to oppose marriage equality.
Although she highlighted that Colombia now has one of the most advanced bodies of case law in the region regarding LGBT+ rights, she cautioned that obstacles to fully exercising these rights persist and that legal advances still lack sufficient social support.
As an example, Sánchez cited proposals to hold a referendum on adoption by same-sex couples.
“The mere mention of that possibility should give us pause because it means that these legal achievements still lack sufficient social and cultural legitimacy.”
Since the Court recognized same-sex marriage in 2016, nearly 18,000 same-sex couples have married in Colombia, although human rights organizations maintain that cases of discrimination and administrative obstacles still exist at some notary offices and public agencies when it comes to exercising that right.
Following the ceremony at the National Museum, thousands of people took to the streets of Bogotá to participate in the traditional Pride Parade, amid rainbow flags, floats, music, and messages in support of equality and against discrimination. EFE
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