The Roman Catholic Church on Sunday
criticized a ruling effectively legalizing same-sex marriage in mostly Catholic Mexico.
The ruling, handed down earlier this
month by Mexico's highest court, declares state bans unconstitutional
but falls short of striking them down. However, district judges are
now obligated to grant injunctions to gay couples who are denied a
marriage license.
(Related: Mexico
Supreme Court strikes gay marriage bans; Chihuahua joins equality
states.)
“Without a doubt, gay marriage is
legal everywhere,” Estefania Vela Barba, an associate law professor
at Mexico City's CIDE University, told The New York Times.
“If a same-sex couple comes along and the [state] code says
marriage is between a man and a woman and for the purposes of
reproduction, the court says, 'Ignore it, marriage is for two
people.'”
An important roadblock to equality is
money. According to the Times, it can cost $1,000 or more and
take months to appeal to the courts.
“A couple with resources can get
married. A couple without resources can't,” said Jose Luis
Caballero, a constitutional scholar at the Iberoamerican University
in Mexico City.
The Roman Catholic Church criticized
the ruling in a statement given to the Times.
“We reiterate our conviction, based
on scientific, anthropological, philosophical, social and religious
reasons, that the family, cell of society is founded on the marriage
of a man and a woman,” said Msgr. Eugenio Lira Rugarcia, secretary
general of the Mexican bishops' conference.
The church's position, he added, is
“stated in the millennia of Western legal tradition, collected and
deepened throughout our history by legislators and judges from very
different schools of thought and ideologies.”