VivirLatino

Planning a vacation to the beautiful Yucatan Peninsula this summer? You might want to know a couple of things before you go: 1) it’s hotter than all hell in the summer and 2) Yucatan’s Congress just overwhelmingly approved a ban on gay marriage in the Mexican state. And while they were at it, they managed to ban gay adoption and ensure that abortion be illegal in almost all cases:

With the vote of 24 of the 25 local deputies, the Yucatan Congress raised heterosexual marriage and families to the constitutional level via the approval of amendments to the state’s Civil Code. With this, marriage between people of the is same sex will be penalized as will abortion “unless it is totally justified”.

14 legislators from the PRI, 9 from the PAN and the representative for the Todos Somos Yucatán coalition (comprised of the Convergencia party and local political groups) voted in favor of the grassroots initiative promoted by the Pro Yucatán Network, made up of conservative groups, to reject all efforts by people of the same sex to form a family and adopt children.

In other words, if you aren’t looking a whole lot like the couple in the photo above and you want to get married or just adopt a kid, you’d better not “estar en Yucatán”.

And about that abortion issue: what exactly is a “totally justified” abortion? According to Mexico’s Anodis.com, the only circumstances under which abortion will be “justifiable” in Yucatán are “poverty, having more than 4 children, a terminal illness or risk of death for the mother”. If you have an abortion and don’t fall into any of these categories, you are facing a year in prison.

Meanwhile, PAN politicians attempted to disguise the ban as something other than hateful and discriminatory by alleging that “there still aren’t adequate conditions within Yucatán society to allow for unions between people of the same sex.”

Via / Anodis and AmbienteG