The council overseeing Brazil’s judiciary ruled on Tuesday that public's cannot refuse to perform same sex marriage ceremonies, a decision that opens the way for gay couples across Latin America’s largest country to marry.
The move by the National Council of Justice, led by Joaquim Barbosa, the chief justice of the nation’s high court, effectively legalizes gay marriage throughout Brazil, legal scholars here said.
Still, there is some room for judicial appeals of the Brazilian decision, potentially within the high court, the Supreme Federal Tribunal, and resistance may emerge in Congress, where gay-marriage legislation has faced opposition from an influential block of evangelical Christian lawmakers.
In 2011, the high court ruled by a comfortable margin that same-sex civil unions should be allowed. But while such unions provide couples in Brazil with access to benefits like health insurance and the division of assets in cases of separation, the council’s decision provides same-sex couples who marry with the same standing as heterosexuals, allowing them, for instance, to take each other’s surnames and adopt children more easily.
In certain ways, the decision broadens what has already unfolded in different of parts of Brazil, where legislatures in more than 10 states have legalized same-sex marriage.
But Congress could be another matter, as tensions simmer between Brazil’s legislative and judicial branches over the high court’s conviction of legislators involved in a vast vote-buying scandal.
Moreover, legislators who oppose same-sex marriage have recently grown more vocal in Congress.
Marco Feliciano, a conservative evangelical preacher who now leads the lower house’s commission for human rights and minorities, has drawn criticism for comments that gay-rights activists call homophobic, but he has resisted pressure to step down from the post.
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