MEXICO (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – A bill passed this week in Mexico\u2019s Senate granting same-sex couples equal social security benefits as heterosexuals now moves to the Chamber of Deputies, where advocates expect it will be voted into law.<\/p>\n
The vote in the country\u2019s recently sworn-in upper house was unanimous.<\/p>\n
The amendment\u00a0also included motions granting gay and lesbian couples the right to a widow or widower\u2019s pension, as well as benefits for orphans of same-sex marriages.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe fact that it\u2019s one of the first initiatives approved in the Senate gives a very good image that this is indeed a priority,\u201d Mexican LGBT+ activist Ricardo Baruch told the Thomson Reuters Foundation on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
\u201cLet\u2019s hope that for the rest of this legislature and throughout the next federal government our rights remain a priority.\u201d<\/p>\n
President-Elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador\u2019s Morena party won a majority in both the upper and lower houses of parliament in the July 1 election.\u00a0Lopez Obrador became the first president-elect in history to recognize sexual diversity in his victory speech.<\/p>\n
Morena Senator Martha Lucia Micher Camarena, who co-sponsored the bill, said Wednesday that the reforms would be the first of many such bills promoted by her party to advance LGBT+ rights in Mexico.<\/p>\n
Other Morena-backed bills coming up for consideration in the Senate include an amendment which would impose up to three years of jail time for anyone who practices gay conversion therapy.<\/p>\n
Introducing the social security bill on Tuesday, Senator Gricelda Valencia de la Mora, president of the Senate Social Security Commission, called the session \u201cspecial, historic and extraordinary.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter a process of fighting for and winning the recognition and safeguarding of the rights of (LGBT+) communities, to whom I express my total recognition and support, they are finally seeing their efforts clarified,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
In 2015, the Mexican Supreme Court ruled same-sex marriage bans unconstitutional, allowing gay and lesbian couples in all states the right to marry, but this decision did not grant full social security benefits to same-sex couples.<\/p>\n
The social security bill will now pass to the Mexico\u2019s parliamentary lower house for final review, but campaigners here are confident the measure will be approved.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think there will be unanimity in the Chamber of Deputies because opinions are a little more mixed,\u201d said Baruch. \u201cBut it\u2019s definitely expected that there won\u2019t be any complications for the initiative to go ahead.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
MEXICO (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – A bill passed this week in Mexico\u2019s Senate granting same-sex couples equal social security benefits as heterosexuals now moves to the Chamber of Deputies, where advocates expect it will be voted into law. The vote in the country\u2019s recently sworn-in upper house was unanimous. The amendment\u00a0also included motions granting gay and lesbian couples the right… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2460","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2460","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/84"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2460"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2460\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2461,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2460\/revisions\/2461"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}