After Europe, Latin America is the region that appears to be making the biggest advances in the area of equal rights for gay people. This month gay pride is celebrated across the globe, and gay rights supporters in Colombia are celebrating the passage of a law that guarantees new rights to same sex couples in that country. Mexico’s La Jornada reports:

The Colombian congress approved a law which recognizes economic and inheritance rights of same sex partners, without making them subject to long legal and bureaucratic processes. The decision ratifies an earlier judgement in the Constitutional Court last February, when the court rejected an order that only recognized marital unions made up of male and female partners.

However, this new law goes above and beyond that, as it explicitly recognizes inheritance rights and authorizes gay couples to sign up together in the social social security system to make use of health services and pensions. This last part wasn’t very clear in the February decision, which only opened the path to let gays inherit the estates of partners who have died.

In addition, the new law, which will go into effect as soon as it is signed by President Álvaro Uribe, simplifies the process that same sex partners will have to go through to gain these rights.

Congratulations to Colombia. We’ve still got a long way to go here.

Via / La Jornada

Image: Gay pride flag flying in Bogota’s Plaza Simon Bolivar via usofficeoncolombia.org