Chilean President Michelle Bachelet is
expected next week to introduced a bill that extends marriage rights
to gay and lesbian couples in the South American country.
According to Chilean LGBT rights
advocate the Movement for Homosexual Integration and Liberation,
Bachelet will introduce the bill on Monday, August 28.
Bachelet in 2015 signed a bill that
recognizes gay couples with civil unions. Many supporters were
disappointed that she did not push for equal marriage rights for gay
couples, as she had pledged to do during her election campaign. The
Bachelet administration in 2016 reached an agreement with the
Movement for Homosexual Integration and Liberation to introduce
marriage equality after the group filed a lawsuit with the
Inter-American Commission on Human Rights on behalf of three gay
couples who are seeking to marry in Chile.
On January 20, Bachelet announced that
her government had started a process to introduce such a bill, which
she promised to send to Congress before the end of June.
“The process will allow the country
to generate a satisfactory bill on marriage equality, recognizing the
same rights for everyone,” she said at the time.
While polls show that a majority (64%)
of Chileans support marriage equality, conservative groups and the
majority Roman Catholic church strongly oppose such unions.