Legal Loopholes May Allow Same-Sex Marriage Outside Mexico City EFE
go to original March 25, 2013

Gay rights activists celebrate a legal victory in the streets of the city of Oaxaca, In December, Mexico's Supreme Court ruled that a law banning gay marriages in Oaxaca was unconstitutional. The law paves the way for same-sex couples to marry in that state and elsewhere in the country. (VideoTopNews)

MEXICO CITY - Despite the fact that Mexico City is the only place in the country that specifically allows same-sex marriage, some authorities in areas with more restrictive regulations are reinterpreting the laws and are seeking to allow same-sex couples to tie the knot.

On Jan. 27, in the city of Cuauhtemoc, a male couple got married even though Colima state has no laws that allow homosexuals to wed, the crux of the matter being that the state also has no laws that prohibits them from doing so.

The architect of the marriage was Indira Vizcaino, the city's 26-year-old mayor, who became the first official in her state to say "yes" to the request of a gay couple to be allowed to wed.

"It's completely legal," said researcher Daniel Marquez, with the Legal Sciences Institute at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, or UNAM, who told Efe that what the mayor is doing is interpreting the law "in terms of the validity of human rights."

In 2011, a constitutional reform was enacted allowing Mexican authorities the overarching freedom to emphasize the essence of human rights, according to the relevant criteria of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and the Inter-American Convention on Human Rights, Marquez said.

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