Gay Marriage

Over the last few years in Colombia has sparked much controversy about the marriage of homosexual couples, which have faced various sectors of society such as the church, the courts, the prosecutor and the LGBT community.

The gay community and the more liberal sectors of society have launched a campaign to legalize marriage between same-sex couples. However they failed to regulate gay marriage, now these couples enjoy the same civil rights as heterosexual couples under the figure of "Unión Libre". Before, same-sex couples didn´t have the same civil rights as heterosexual couples, which was not allowed to be linked to the regime health and social security as beneficiaries of his partner. There were many cases in which people who lived the last years of their lives with their couples have been left without home and without their couples's pension after they died, because the law did not recognize them as permanent couple.

The arguments against gay marriage are proposed by the most conservative sectors of Colombia led by the Catholic Church. Some of them are that homosexuality is unnatural and goes against what God has ordained for human beings, that the family must consist of a man and a woman, and that to ensure civil rights for homosexuals opens doors to allow the adoption of children by same-sex couples.

This last point is one of the most controversial, since as expected, many gay couples want children in their families and in fact lesbian women often become pregnant and then they raise the child by another woman. However, what is at issue here has extended the rights of homosexual couples and touches the rights of children. The questions are: a child raised in a gay family tend to be gay by imitation? There are the same maternal and paternal figures assume the different roles of authority in a gay family? Scientific studies seem to support gay couples, however, Colombian society is still shudders at this possibility.