SANTIAGO (AP) – A Chilean family court judge ordered the Civil Registry to register a girl under two years old as the daughter of two mothers in a country that has not yet completed the processing of a project that allows equal marriage and adoption , reported on Wednesday the Movement for Homosexual Integration and Liberation, MOVILH.
The mothers of the minor joined in 2016 under the Civil Union Agreement (AUC), which has been in force in Chile since 2015 and which recognizes the legal bond of heterosexual and homosexual couples and protects aspects such as inheritance, although it does not pronounce on adoption .
Judge Claudia Reyes Dueñas, of the Second Family Court of Santiago, said in her ruling that “it is the obligation of the State bodies to guarantee the principle of equality and non-discrimination and more specifically the best interests of the girl. Excluding this rule from its application to same-sex couples would result in arbitrary discrimination against them emanating from the sexual orientation of their mothers ”.
One of the girl’s mothers underwent assisted reproductive techniques, but the Civil Code that regulates them refers to the father or mother “of the child conceived through them”, and does not pronounce on the son or daughter of same-sex couples that undergo this type of fertilization. There are also no regulations that expressly prevent double maternal affiliation.
“We hope that these rulings serve to educate and sensitize the National Congress on the need to approve equal marriage, guaranteeing the same adoption and filiation rights that heterosexual couples have,” said Oscar Rementería, MOVILH spokesman. He added that “this is the fifth sentence of similar characteristics of which we are aware, after a pioneering ruling issued in 2017”, conquered after arduous legal battles.
The judge’s ruling comes a week after, in a double vote, the Chilean Senate approved by 28 votes in favor and 14 against marriage between persons of the same sex and by 29 votes in favor and 14 the one they can adopt. Now the bill must be analyzed and approved in the Chamber of Deputies, where the center-left opposition that supports the rule is a majority.
As homoparental adoption is not allowed so far, some couples linked by the AUC cancel their legal union and adopt as single, thus avoiding the discrimination that prevents them from being parents of a minor.
In Chile, the equal marriage project was detained for four years in the Senate, until at the beginning of June, surprisingly, the center-right president Sebastián Piñera expressed his support for same-sex marriage. Before that date, the president had always rejected it, claiming that the link is between a man and a woman, arousing the ire of many of his supporters. It was originally sent to Congress by former President Michelle Bachelet in 2017, seven months after the end of her second term (2014-2018).
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