Same Sex Couples - Comparative Insights on Marriage and Cohabitation
Estefanía Vela Barba, Başak Başoğlu, Ayelet Blecher-Prigat, Toni Holness, Natalia Ramírez-Bustamante, Macarena Sáez, José María
Language: English
Pages: 431
ISBN: 2:00299572
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Until the end of the twentieth century marriage was the only union considered legitimate to form a family. Today more than 40 countries have granted rights to same sex couples, including at least 19 that have included same-sex marriage within their family law systems.1 Every day there is a new bill being discussed or a new claim being brought to court seeking formal recognition of same-sex couples or of families formed by individuals of the same sex.
This worldwide trend is creating new rights for individuals of diverse sexual orientations and gender identities. In countries where marriage has been granted to same-sex couples, a whole new set of rules has emerged. Immigration regulations, tax statutes, inheritance rights, adoption, surrogacy, and presumption of paternity favoring the husband are some of the areas that have been deeply changed by same-sex marriage. These legal changes have benefited thousands of gays and lesbians who now have access to rights and benefits traditionally exclusive to the heterosexual married family.
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region and it shows that heteronormativity in family law is a vestige of British colonialism. Today Great Britain as other European countries, are moving away of the heterosexual paradigm in family law. Post colonialist Caribbean is not following this trend, at least not yet. Keywords Same-sex couplesMarriage in the Caribbean CommonwealthHomophobiaTransphobiaAnti sodomy statutesBuggery lawsViolence against LGBTI individuals This chapter explores the development of same sex marriage rights in
analysis is likely the first criterion used to interpret the constitutionality of a statute, but it needs to be contrasted with other criteria, and it is not necessarily the element that will prevail. 38 A grammatical criterion, alone, is not a sufficient element of interpretation. 2.2.2 Historical Criterion The historical criterion attempts to ascertain the intent of the Constituent Assembly. Appeal 6864-2005 stated that “the Constitution does not allow the public powers to change the sense of
marry for opposite-sex couples had not been subject to any type of limitation as a consequence of the enactment of Act 13/2005 and had not been denaturalized because of it. 132 Despite the TC’s statement that it was not its role to judge the opportunity or convenience of enacting Act 13/2005, but only to determine the constitutionality of such Act, the Court seemed to welcome the new legislation as positive. It stated that the legislation was based on dignity and free development of
is issuing reports and opinions on legislative drafts. See further, on the Council of the State, SÁNCHEZ NAVARRO, Á.J.: Consejo de Estado, función consultiva y reforma constitucional, Reus, Madrid, (2007). 5 Study on the amendment of the Civil Code regarding marriage between persons of same sex, of 26th January 2005, available at
relationships that went beyond the couple, the Court then established that the law had to recognize socially relevant family relationships. “The family,” the Court reasoned, “rather than being a legal creation, spawns from human relationships, and corresponds to a social design that […] is different in each culture […].”87 What a family was depended on the social context. And since social contexts change over time, so did family structures. Social phenomena like the incorporation of women to the