A rose by any other name… stinks?
The State of Colima legislature voted overwhelming yesterday to create a special legal classification and process, enlace conyugal (marital bond), for couples of the same sex.
What’s in a name? Quite a bit.
Despite assurances by PRI Deputy Martín Flores Castañeda that the new judicial form provides “the same rights and obligations in regulatory law, including inheritance and social security law [as a marriage], federal law — when it does not specifically use the word “matrimonio” refers to esposa/o (spouse), or concubina/o (spouse in a “free union”). Nowhere in federal regulatory or other law does the term “enlaces conyugales” exist. While the Supreme Court decided in August 2010 that a marriage (or “free union”) in a state which allows same-gender marriages is valid everywhere in the Republic, there is no guarantee that an enlace conyugal will be valid anywhere outside Colima, or that persons entering into an enlace will be covered by federal law.
The PRD’s Francisco Rodríguez García is seeking a federal injunction to either force the state to simplify things and just call an enlace conyugal matrimonio… or to overturn the new law altogether.
Vladimir Parra Barragán, the state president of Morena, has offered his party’s legal assistance to same gender couples who want to seek an injunction against the new law and have a matrimonio, not an enlace conyugal.
Source: Pedro Zamora Briseño, Aval en Colima a “enlace conyugal” entre parejas gay (Proceso, 4 July 2013)
The Mex Files 
In my multi-part series on the timing of the DOMA and Prop 8 cases at the Supreme Court, I predicted that the invalidation of DOMA would lead to marriage equality litigation across the country in states like New Jersey (and, at that point, California) with civil unions or domestic partnership laws. As I expressed then, it’s worth taking a moment to reflect on just how meaningful the death of DOMA’s Section 3 is. To use Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg droll but brilliant words from oral arguments this March, the end of DOMA meant the end of ‘skim-milk marriages’ that offered only state benefits but not federal ones.