{"id":12529,"date":"2020-05-28T10:41:51","date_gmt":"2020-05-28T04:56:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/?p=12529"},"modified":"2020-05-28T10:41:51","modified_gmt":"2020-05-28T04:56:51","slug":"costa-rica-celebrates-first-same-sex-weddings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/costa-rica-celebrates-first-same-sex-weddings\/","title":{"rendered":"Costa Rica celebrates first same-sex weddings"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"story-body__introduction\">Kathmandu (Pahichan) May 28 &#8211; The first same-sex weddings have taken place in Costa Rica, the first Central American country to equalise its marriage legislation.<\/p>\n<p>A lesbian couple became the first to tie the knot in a ceremony that took place just after the new law came into effect at midnight.<\/p>\n<p>The wedding was shown on national TV.<\/p>\n<p>President Carlos Alvarado said the law change meant Costa Rica now recognised the rights lesbian and gay people had always deserved.<\/p>\n<p>He tweeted (in Spanish) that &#8220;<a class=\"story-body__link-external\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/CarlosAlvQ\/status\/1265160738936631296\">empathy and love should from now on be the guiding principles which will allow us to move forward<\/a>\u00a0and build a country where there is room for everyone&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>The first same-sex marriage ceremony was broadcast as the culmination of a three-hour programme celebrating marriage equality.<\/p>\n<p>Marriage equality came about after\u00a0<a class=\"story-body__link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/world-latin-america-45138687\">the constitutional court declared in August 2018 that a ban on same-sex weddings was unconstitutional<\/a>\u00a0and discriminatory.<\/p>\n<p>The court gave Costa Rica&#8217;s parliament 18 months to change the law.<\/p>\n<p>Enrique S\u00e1nchez, Costa Rica&#8217;s first openly gay member of parliament, welcomed the change and praised those who had spent years lobbying for the same-sex marriage ban to be lifted.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"media-landscape has-caption full-width\"><span class=\"image-and-copyright-container\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"responsive-image__img js-image-replace\" src=\"https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/news\/624\/cpsprodpb\/BB9E\/production\/_112503084_eb9971af-b41f-470f-8140-5d8fc950f8b8.jpg\" alt=\"Alexandra Quiros (L) and Dunia Araya (R) cut a cake during their wedding in Heredia, Costa Rica, on May 26, 2020.\" width=\"976\" height=\"549\" data-highest-encountered-width=\"624\" \/><span class=\"off-screen\">Image copyright<\/span><span class=\"story-image-copyright\">AFP<\/span><\/span><figcaption class=\"media-caption\"><span class=\"off-screen\">Image caption<\/span><span class=\"media-caption__text\">Celebrations had to be kept small because of the coronavirus pandemic<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>&#8220;With their experience, their struggles&#8230; they have helped build a society where there are no second-class families or second-rate people,&#8221; he told Reuters news agency.<\/p>\n<p>Same-sex marriage is already possible in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Uruguay and some parts of Mexico, but Costa Rica is the first country in Central America to allow it.<\/p>\n<p>Some religious groups had opposed the move and more than 20 lawmakers tried to delay the change in the law.<\/p>\n<p>Source : BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Kathmandu (Pahichan) May 28 &#8211; The first same-sex weddings have taken place in Costa Rica, the first Central American country to equalise its marriage legislation.<br \/>\nA lesbian couple became the first to tie the knot in a ceremony that took place just after the new law came into effect at midnight.<br \/>\nThe wedding was shown on national TV.<br \/>\nPresident Carlos Alvarado said the law change meant Costa Rica now recognised the rights lesbian and gay people had always deserved.<br \/>\nHe tweeted (in Spanish) that &#8220;empathy and love should from now on be the guiding &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":12530,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,8,621,490,11],"tags":[1276,588],"class_list":["post-12529","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-current-issue","category-human-rights","category-news","category-slider","category-world","tag-costa-rica","tag-same-sex-marriage"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12529","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12529"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12529\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12531,"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12529\/revisions\/12531"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12530"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}