Brazil Moves Towards Legalizing Gay Marriage

This is already an old story, but it's important enough that I wanted to include it here. As anyone who follows Latin American news knows by now, Brazil's National Council of Justice issued a ruling last week that paves the way for marriage licenses to be issued for gay civil unions in Brazil.

If this unfolds as expected, Brazil would be the third Latin American country to recognize gay marriages, along with Argentina and Uruguay, and the fourth in the Western Hemisphere (gay marriage is legal in Canada).

According to an article on the Huffington Post, "Fourteen of Brazil's 27 states so far have legalized same-same marriages." The Brazilian Congress has been dragging its feet on legislation which would legalize same-sex marriages, due in part to opposition from conservative evangelical representatives. 

This is an interesting, and in some ways unexpected, development from a country with a large Roman Catholic population and social norms which are sometimes conservative and sometimes permissive. 

While I was unable to find a recent quote from Dilma on the subject of gay marriage, she has opposed it in the past. Of course, if the matter is to be decided by the courts, then her opinion is just that: her opinion.