Via JMG: COLOMBIA: High Court Rebukes Campaign To Block Same-Sex Marriages

 

Colombia's Constitutional Court has told Inspector General Alejandro Ordóñez to drop his campaign to block same-sex marriages. J. Lester Feder reports at Buzzfeed:

Ordoñez had been threatening disciplinary action against any official who took up this authority. His case was based on the fact that the court’s ruling did not specifically say that couples can “marry,” nor did it directly change the law. Instead, it gave congress until June 20, 2013 to change the law to give equal rights to same-sex couples. The 2011 ruling only gives the power directly to judges and notaries because congress failed to act, and ambiguity in the ruling left it unclear whether they will call these unions “marriages” or something else entirely. On Friday, the court rejected Ordoñez’s petition for it to clarify that it did not intend to open marriage to same-sex couples. And Constitutional Court President Jorge Iván Palacio sternly warned Ordoñez to “observe the determinations of this Court and monitor their strict and timely compliance.”

Feder notes that the Court has still not clarified the murky wording of their 2011 ruling. LGBT activists, however, are taking their message to Ordóñez as a very positive sign.
RELATED: Same-sex marriage is legal in the South American nations of Brazil, Uruguay, and Argentina.

Labels: Colombia, marriage equality, South America

Reposted from Joe