Mexico's President Wants to Legalize Same-Sex Marriage

The president of Mexico, Enrique Peña Nieto, has announced that he will be sending a proposal to congress to reform the constitution in a way that guarantees same-sex marriage across the country.

The announcement — made at a governmental commemoration of the International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia on Tuesday — follows a supreme court ruling last year that said defining marriage as heterosexual violates the principle of equality before the law.

"Equal marriage will be explicit in our constitution in order to fully incorporate the criteria of the supreme court so that people can get married without being discriminated against for reasons of ethnicity, disability, social condition, religion, gender, or sexual preference," the president said.

On Tuesday morning, the profile picture of Peña Nieto on the Twitter account of the presidential office appeared with a rainbow photo filter.

The fanfare around the proposed reform contrasts with the president's tendency to avoid taking a stand on social issues.

When asked specifically about his opinion of gay marriage in 2010, when he was gearing up to win elections two years later, he said that rights won by the gay community should not be lost, but avoided expressing explicit support.

Mexico City became the first Mexican jurisdiction to legalize gay marriage in 2009, and several more of the country's 32 states have followed suit since then.

Last year's supreme court ruling, which laid the groundwork for today's announcement of nationwide equal marriage, is the result of a painstakingly crafted strategy by activists who sought marriage licenses in states where gay marriage had not been legalized. They then challenged the refusals they received in the courts until their cases reached the supreme court.

This eventually led to five separate rulings by the supreme court on the cases of five specific couples. This set jurisprudence and effectively already means that any couple anywhere in Mexico could take a refusal to marry them to a federal court and get an order in their favor.

Activists campaigning for the legalization of marijuana have followed a very similar strategy. This led to last year's groundbreaking supreme court ruling to allow four individuals to use the drug in any way they want to, on the grounds that to stop them would be a violation of their personal freedoms.

Follow Oscar Balderas on Twitter: @oscarbalmen