Same-sex couples will be allowed to marry in Uruguay from today.The country became the twelfth in the world to legalise same-sex marriage in May after President Jose Mujica signed the measure into law.
About half a dozen couples will apply for dates at civil registry offices in the coming days, activists say.The reform was passed by Congress in April with overwhelming support.
Argentina became the first Latin American country to allow same-sex couples to marry in 2010. In May, the council that oversees Brazil’s judiciary said it was wrong for marriage licences to be denied to same-sex couples.
However, full legalisation concerning equal marriage in Brazil still depends on the passage of a law in Congress. “This is the equivalent of authorising homosexual marriage in Brazil,” Raquel Pereira de Castro Araujo, head of the human rights committee of the Brazilian bar association told the AFP news agency at the time. Last week, Colima became the latest Mexican state to allow civil unions among same-sex couples.