Honduras Measure to Ban Same-Sex Marriage Mobilizes Rights Groups

The veteran congressman has been watching what he regards as a surging tide of immorality sweeping the United States and other parts of the Western world. He's determined to stop it from reaching Honduras, even if he has to rewrite the law of the land.

"In various countries of the world -- Holland, Spain, various states of the United States -- there is already [same-sex] marriage," Discua says. "It is already coming, and it is already accepted."

But not in this impoverished, crime-racked Central American nation of 6.8 million. In October, Discua sponsored a congressional motion to ban marriage and adoption by homosexuals. Strongly backed by the country's swelling evangelical Christian movement, as well as the Roman Catholic Church, the motion passed unanimously.

If the measure passes a second legislative vote, as required by federal law, the constitution will be amended to read that marriage only between a man and a woman is legally valid. In effect, Honduras would implement nationwide what 11 U.S. states voted for in ballot measures in November and what President Bush says he hopes to enact across the U.S.: a comprehensive ban on gay marriage.

"We hope that next year they will ratify it, in which we recognize that the state of matrimony is between a man and a woman," says the Rev. Oswaldo Canales, president of the Evangelical Fraternity of Honduras, which represents 98% of the country's estimated 2 million evangelicals. "For me, a homosexual is like an alcoholic, like an addict that needs help. They are sick morally and have a sickness of the soul."

Marriage rights aren't a high priority for Honduran gay rights activists, but the proposed constitutional ban has mobilized them against what they see as another attempt to relegate gay and lesbian Hondurans to second-class citizenship. The activists say they're fed up with job discrimination, police brutality, hate crimes and the media's stereotyping of them as prostitutes, junkies and delinquents.

They place some of the blame for the issue on the U.S. With national elections coming up, gay activists say Honduran conservatives are taking a cue from their counterparts to the north and trying to rally support with the gay-marriage issue.