Lawmakers in Uruguay on Thursday voted to allow adoptions by gay and lesbian couples, as the nation prepared to set a new precedent in Latin America.
The measure still needs to pass through the Senate, a move considered a formality since it was already approved there on a first reading.
“We’re deeply happy,” Mauricio Coitino, from the country’s Black Sheep Collective of gays, lesbians and transsexuals, said after Thursday’s vote.
“The main thing is that the project promotes equality for families with gay or transsexual parents, so they can raise their children with the same rights,” he said.
Gay adoptions remain contentious worldwide, as illustrated by recent legal disputes on the issue from Germany to Florida.
Uruguay now moves another step away from its more conservative neighbors after having already authorized civil unions for homosexuals last year.
Lawmakers approved the move by 40 votes out of 53 with 13 voting against it, said Jaime Trobo of the opposition National Party.
The ruling leftist Frente Amplio coalition has a majority in parliament and had been expected to push the measure through.
President Tabare Vazquez, the first leftist leader in Uruguay, already opened access for homosexuals to military schools in May.
The country’s religious leaders and some right-wing politicians strongly opposed the latest move for homosexual rights.
The archbishop of Montevideo, Nicolas Cotugno, said before the vote that it would be a “serious error to accept the adoption of children by homosexual couples.”
“It’s not about religion, philosophy or sociology. It’s something which is mainly about the respect of human nature itself,” Cotugno said in a statement.
The Senate was due to vote on the measure before Sept. 15, the end of a legislative period, which was brought forward ahead of presidential elections in October.
Gays and lesbians have won the right to adoption several countries, although the rights vary greatly, with some permitting gay couples to adopt children who are not related to them, and others only allowing the gay partner of a biological parent to adopt that person’s offspring.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS