Gay Today: World

Colombia's Gay Equality Bill is Dead

By Rex Wockner
International News Report

The gay equality bill introduced in the Colombian Senate September 9 by Senator Margarita Londono is dead. It was killed by Senator Carlos Corsi who received the assignment to oversee the bill's movement.

The proposal banned anti-gay hate crimes, created partnership registration for gay couples, extended health-care benefits and Social Security to recognized gay families, covered sex-change operations under the national health-care plan, granted homosexuals "liberty of association and congregation," and banned anti-gay bias in textbooks.

After the bill was withdrawn, Londono blasted Corsi in a letter to the daily newspaper El Diario.

"The Colombian family has undergone deep changes and among them is the existence of families formed by homosexual partners," she said.

"To not acknowledge this is to deny reality in Colombia and to legislate for a country that doesn't exist even in the most modest of the Honorable Senator Carlos Corsi's dreams. Mr. Corsi, in a moralistic fit worthy of a crusader in medieval times, demanded that the project be archived, using his Puritan blade to rip out the cancer that he likened to homosexuality. That is so macho!"

Related Stories from the GayToday Archive:

U.S. Looks at Anti-Gay Climate in Latin America

Colombia: Senator & Activist Introduce Rights Bill
Latin America's First Openly-Gay Member of Congress Speaks

Related Sites:
Gay Colombia

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