Ecuadorian Court Rules for Marriage Equality

The ruling is being appealed, but advocates are confident.

Trudy Ring

Trudy Ring is The Advocate’s senior politics editor and copy chief. She has been a reporter and editor for daily newspapers and LGBTQ+ weeklies/monthlies, trade magazines, and reference books. She is a political junkie who thinks even the wonkiest details are fascinating, and she always loves to see political candidates who are groundbreaking in some way. She enjoys writing about other topics as well, including religion (she’s interested in what people believe and why), literature, theater, and film. Trudy is a proud “old movie weirdo” and loves the Hollywood films of the 1930s and ’40s above all others. Other interests include classic rock music (Bruce Springsteen rules!) and history. Oh, and she was a Jeopardy! contestant back in 1998 and won two games. Not up there with Amy Schneider, but Trudy still takes pride in this achievement.

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Trudy Ring

July 05 2018 11:17 AM EST

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A court in Ecuador has ruled that the nation's ban on same-sex marriage is illegal.

Two judges in the Family, Women, Children and Adolescents Court made that finding last week, Gay Star News reports. In two cases brought by same-sex couples who had been denied marriage licenses, the judges ruled they must be allowed to wed immediately. The judges cited a January ruling by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights that the 20 countries under its jurisdiction must offer equal marriage rights to same-sex couples.

Not all the nations have gone along with the Inter-American Court's ruling, however. Ecuador's Civil Registry had denied licenses to the two female couples, leading to the cases that came before the Ecuadorian court in the city of Cuenca. Family, Women, Children and Adolescents Court Judges Iliana Vallejo and Ruth Alvarez both ruled that rejection of the women's marriage license applications was a violation of their human rights.

The Civil Registry is appealing the rulings to the Provincial Court in Azuay, the province in which Cuenca is located. Still, LGBT rights activists are celebrating.

"It is expected that this advance in human rights in Ecuador will [be] strengthened in the appeal and that opens the possibility for same-sex couples [to be] really free and equal to realize their dreams," a spokesperson for the Feminist Legal Collective, which assisted in the cases, told Gay Star News.