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Mexican President Moves to Legalize Gay Marriage Nationwide

MEXICO CITY — The president of Mexico said Tuesday that he was submitting a proposal to Congress to legalize same-sex marriage, as Mexico presses forward with breaking long-held taboos in Latin America.

Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil already allow same-sex marriage, and Colombia’s high court declared last month that gay couples have a constitutional right to marry. With the addition of Mexico, more than 70 percent of Latin Americans now live in countries where same-sex marriage is permitted.

President Enrique Peña Nieto of Mexico said his two bills would change the Constitution to incorporate the right for same-sex couples to wed and reform the federal civil code to assure marriage equality.

Those changes would turn into law a ruling last year by the nation’s Supreme Court that it was unconstitutional for states to ban same-sex marriage. In practice, though, the effect of the ruling was to legalize gay marriage without requiring Mexico’s states to rewrite their marriage laws.

“In our country, there can’t be those who have certain rights in some states and others who do not,” Mr. Peña Nieto said at a ceremony for the National Day of the Fight Against Homophobia.

Revising the Constitution, he said, would incorporate marriage equality as a human right with full clarity.

Since the Supreme Court’s ruling, several states have pushed back, revising their local constitutions to declare that marriage is between a man and a woman.

“We are changing the concept that marriage is only to propagate the species,” said Humberto Castillejos, the president’s legal counsel. “It cannot only be to procreate children.”

The president’s proposal is intended to make recognition of marriage equality “automatic and for the whole country,” Mr. Castillejos said.

But Jordi Díez, a political scientist at the University of Guelph in Canada, who has written about same-sex marriage in Latin America, said the practical effect of the proposal might not be as immediate as advertised. “It’s still up to the states to change the definition of state law,” Mr. Díez said, although he added that he expected a majority of states to pass the constitutional change.