Ecuador officially became the 27th country in the world to legalize same-sex marriage on June 12.
It was a narrow win, with judges ruling 5-4 in favor of same-sex marriage so that the country is in compliance with the Inter-American Court of Human Rights 2018 marriage equality ruling.
In January 2018, the court that oversees human rights in the Americas ordered all Latin American and Caribbean countries that hadn’t legalized same-sex marriage to update their laws to do so.
The Ecuadorian case was brought by two gay couples — Efraín Soria and Javier Benalcázar and Rubén Salazar and Carlos Verdesoto — who sued the country for their right to marry.
Soria is president of the Ecuadorian Equality Foundation.
The ruling also ordered Ecuadorian lawmakers to pass a same-sex marriage bill. Currently, Ecuador’s constitution defines marriage as between a man and a woman.
The win came after nearly two decades of work, representatives of the Ecuadorian Federation of LGBTI Organizations said in a statement.
They were opposed by the Catholic Church and the Christian conservative Life and Family group in the mostly Catholic country.
Same-sex unions have been legal for a decade, but couples did not have the same rights as straight married couples.
Reuters reported that opponents argued that rather than grant marriage equality, supporters should lobby parliament to gain equal rights to marriage under the law that granted same-sex civil unions.
“There are no words to express how we feel right now,” Danilo Manzano Navas, director of Diálogo Diverso, a Quito-based advocacy group, said in a Facebook Live video he recorded after the court announced its ruling, reported the Washington Blade.
Originally published by the Bay Area Reporter.
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