Mexico president proposes legalizing same-sex marriage nationwide News
Mexico president proposes legalizing same-sex marriage nationwide

Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto [official website, in Spanish] on Tuesday signed an initiative that would amend the country’s constitution to legalize same-sex marriage [press release, in Spanish] nationwide. Marking the national day against homophobia, Peña Nieto tweeted “I signed reform initiatives to promote marriage equality and its addition to the Constitution and the Federal Civil Code.” The proposal still requires congressional approval. The move follows a June ruling by the Supreme Court of Mexico [official website, in Spanish], which declared it unconstitutional [JURIST report] for Mexican states to ban same-sex marriages but did not invalidate any state laws. Same-sex marriage is currently legal only in Mexico City and the states of Campeche, Jalisco, Coahuila, Quintana Roo, Colima, Nayarit and Chihuahua.

If approved, Peña Nieto’s proposal would make Mexico the fifth Latin American country to legalize same-sex marriage. Argentina became the first in 2010, followed by Uruguay and Brazil [JURIST reports] in 2013. Colombia’s Constitutional Court legalized same-sex marriage last month.

THIS DAY @ LAW

Bank of England granted political independence

On May 6, 1997, British Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown announced that the Bank of England would be granted political independence for the first time in the three-hundred year history of the Bank. This policy was statutized in the subsequent Bank of England Act of 1998 gave the Bank independent control of British monetary policy effective June 1, 1998. Read the Bank of England Act of 1998.

Chinese Exclusion Act barred Chinese laborers from US

On May 6, 1882, President Chester A. Arthur signed the Chinese Exclusion Act, barring Chinese laborers from entering the United States and prohibiting courts from bestowing US citizenship on Chinese. Connecticut Senator Joseph Hawley spoke out against the Act in these words: Let the proposed statue be read 100 years hence, dug out of the dust of ages and forgotten as it will be except for a line of sneer by some historian, and ask the young man not well read in the history of this country what was the reason for excluding these men and he would not be able to find it in the law. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and its successors were abolished in 1943 at the insistence of President Franklin Roosevelt.