Within 60 days, same-sex couples in Brazil’s São Paulo state will be able to legally marry simply by going to a notary. That’s thanks to a new rule issued yesterday by the state judiciary.
The legal status of same-sex unions in Brazil has been a little confusing. The country’s top court recently ruled that same-sex couples have the same domestic partnership rights as heterosexual couples. Couples that have registered their domestic partnerships have since successfully gone to court to “convert” these unions into marriages.
The new rule means same-sex couples can skip the court phase in order to marry. It is also another major boost for the same-sex marriage movement in Latin America. Forty-one million people live in São Paulo state, making it the most populous state in the largest country in Latin America. It also has a population several times larger than Uruguay, which is on the cusp of legalizing same-sex marriage.
