Same-Sex Marriage In Mexico: Lawmakers Reject Enrique Peña Nieto's Bill Proposal

While across the nation the rights of the LGBT community when it comes to marriage has swayed, giving them the right to marry in some countries, the community still has a long way to go in Latin America.

According to FOX News Latino, a committee in Mexico's lower house of congress has rejected a same-sex marriage proposal from President Enrique Peña Nieto. The idea that has sparked many protests and demonstrations nationwide by both supporters and opponets has come to standstill in Mexico.

The site reports that the measure of enshrining same-sex couples right to wed in the consititution was turned down by a vote of 19-8, with one abstention, in the Commision on Constitutional Matters.

Mexico's Supreme Court ruled last year that it was unconstitutional for states to bar same-sex marriage. But the decision did not have the effect of overturning or rewriting any laws on the books, meaning individual couples still have to sue in each case for the right to wed.

Commission chairman Edgar Castillo Martinez seems pleased with the decision. He believes that the vote means that the matter is totally and definitively concluded.

Although congress has shut down the same-sex marriage bill, same-sex marriage has been formally legalized only in some jurisdictions, such as Mexico City, the northern state of Coahuila and Quintana Roo state on the Caribbean coast.

Lawmaker Guadalupe Acosta Naranjo of the leftist Democratic Revolution Party blamed political calculations for the defeat of the measure.

"A reform of which we should feel proud," Acosta said, according to the transcript. "Because the rights of minorities are not put to a vote. They are expanded and recognized, and it is congress that should protect them."

Pena Nieto's proposal in May would have codified the principles of the Supreme Court ruling in the constitution and extended the right to all of Mexico. The president's political party suffered big setbacks in midterm elections in June, and largely sat on the issue afterward.

Although many strides have been taken to legalize marriage for same-sex couples around the world this just goes to show that some people simply fear change.