A gay couple is preparing to wed in Colombia, just days after the
nation saw its first gay couple marry.
According to the AFP, a civil judge in the southwestern city of
Cali has ordered a notary to marry Luis Rodriguez and Edward Amaya.
The notary had reportedly refused to marry the couple on June 20.
Judge Campo Elias Cordoba wrote in his decision, “there is no
other contractual option known to generate the intended effects of
the plaintiffs” than marriage.
Cordoba added that the men's union “should be governed by the
regulations applicable to civil marriage, both in their rights and in
their duties and other privileges which are derived therefrom.”
The notary has agreed to marry the couple, Rodriguez told the AFP.
The ceremony is expected to take place on Monday.
Last week, Carlos Hernando Rivera and Gonzalo Ruiz Giraldo
legalized their union before a judge in Bogota, the nation's capital.
However, Judge Carmen Lucia Rodriguez, who officiated the
ceremony, avoided using the word “marriage” to define the
couple's union.
Gay couples in Colombia turned to the courts after lawmakers
failed to meet a June 20 deadline imposed by the nation's
Constitutional Court.
In 2011, the Constitutional Court ruled that gay couples had a
right to a family and ordered Congress to remedy the situation. The
court said that if a law is not approved by June 20, 2013, then “gay
couples can go to a notary and with the same solemnity of a
heterosexual marriage enter a union similar to one between a
heterosexual couple.”
A marriage bill died in the Colombia Senate in April after a
heated debate.
Despite the failure to approve legislation, opponents insisted
that the court's order did not guarantee marriage for gay couples.
Some notaries told couples that they could enter a “solemn union.”
Gay weekly the Washington
Blade described this as a contract “similar to an agreement
into which two people enter when they buy a house together.”