Same-sex marriage is guaranteed in the Constitution of South Africa.

Ecuador is a country located in the northwest of South America. It is a multiethnic country that has an important culture, geography, history, and natural wealth. The United Nations Statistics Division has determined that Ecuador is a developing country because it has low standards of democratic governments, industrialization, social programs, and human rights guarantees that are yet to develop to those met in the West.

Nonetheless, the same sex unions were approved by the new Constitution in its section 68 . It is the only case over the world that the Constitution guarantees the gay union. The Ecuadorian was the third constitution worldwide that recognizes the non-discrimination principal over sexual orientation since 1998. The Ecuadorian case recognizes the same rights of the marriage with a full protection. Furthermore, Ecuador is the third country of Latin America that accepts the gays unions after Uruguay and Colombia. The Argentina, Mexico and Brazil cases recognize same sex unions only in some regions, not in the all country.

The first civil union in Ecuador was approved in August 12th, 2009. An Ecuadorian man who works for an international organization got a union with an American guy. Their first speech states that Ecuador was more liberal that the USA because of the recognition of his gay union at a national level . They had previously gotten a civil union in Vermont which was useless to get a family visa because of its lack of national and international recognition. After he applied to the Ecuadorian union, he could get the family visa in Switzerland.

This couple has had some challenges to face. The first one was that the notaries did not want to celebrate the civil union. The other one was there were some priests that began to criticize gays unions. Finally, they could carry out their goal with the sponsorship of a young lawyer Andres Buitron. They were working together with Equidad NGO (Fundación Ecuatoriana Equidad). Until now, there have been ten unions of same sex couples. Nine of them are male couples and four of them have a foreigner partner (American, Swiss, Cuban and Chilean). These couples have been living together for years, and the average length is 9 years. One of them was living for more than 20 years .
Finally, the Ecuadorian legislation has recognized many LGBT rights since 2008. Additionally, the hate crimes against LGBT people are forbidden and the Municipality of Quito enacted an Ordinance to foster LGBT integration . Ecuador has became a very protective LGBT country and its Capital Quito a safe place.

Here is the law

loi n° 2009-526 du 12 mai 2009 de simplification et de clarification du droit et d’allègement des procédures a été publiée au Journal Officiel d’aujourd’hui (JORF n° 0110 du 13 mai 2009).

Par conséquent, son article 1er, qui avait été introduit par la voie d’un amendement dont M. YUNG était l’auteur et qui prévoit la reconnaissance en France des partenariats civils enregistrés à l’étranger (article 515-7-1 du code civil), est désormais applicable.

http://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichTexte.do?cidTexte=JORFTEXT000020604162&dateTexte=&categorieLien=id

It’s now law in France to recognise foreign civil partnerships.

Abortion is also available for women whose pregnancies were caused by rape, and often the Court will grant women the power to abort if it is known the fetus is ill formed, misses a brain, etc.

Seriously, I don’t believe the Catholic Church has that much of an influence on Brazilian politics. Rio de Janeiro is the only state where a governor has succeeded in being elected by pushing religious rhetorics — and he was an Evangelical Christian, not a Catholic. (And I believe his success had more to do with his populistic, fiscal leftist, politics than to the pious image he projected.) Most Brazilians are derisively dismissed by devoted folks as “IBGE Catholics”.

IMO, the one South America country who has a long way to go to get rid of the Roman Catholic Church meddling its politics and its citizens’ personal affairs is Chile, which, up until 2004(!), thanks to its Catholic parties, didn’t have a legislation on divorce.

Civil Unions are legal in the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul, the state closest to Uruguay.

Perhaps hell has installed freezers.

So, if the catholic church has that much influence, I imagine getting civil unions approved isn’t going to happen. A snowball’s chance in hell seems appropriate.