Constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage stalls in El Salvador

Attempts to amend El Salvador's constitution to prohibit same sex marriages have stalled in El Salvador's National Assembly for now. The decision of the FMLN to withhold its support from the amendment kept the proposal from gaining the necessary two-thirds majority vote. The IPS news service has a lengthy analysis of the politics of LGBT rights and the constitutional amendments in El Salvador:

The proposed reform would add a stipulation that only "men and women who were born so" are competent to enter into marriage. In addition, "Marriages between persons of the same sex celebrated or recognised under the laws of other countries, and other unions that do not fulfil the conditions established under Salvadoran law, will be null and void in El Salvador." ...

Amendments to articles 32, 33 and 34 of the constitution, closing off any possibility of marriage or civil union between homosexuals, or the adoption of children by same-sex couples, were introduced to Congress in 2006 and approved unanimously by the previous legislature in April 2009.

In the previous legislature, the FMLN supported the constitutional amendments, presumably to curry favour with voters at the centre. But during the campaign for the March 2009 elections in which President Mauricio Funes was elected, the party changed its position and now maintains that the changes violate the civil rights of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual (LGBT) community.

Votes from the FMLN, which holds 35 of the 84 seats in Congress, were needed to ratify the amendments, as the rightwing parties that support the changes do not have enough lawmakers to reach a two-thirds majority.

Read more of the IPS analysis here.