Colombia’s top court has legalized same-sex marriage.

The Catholic country follows Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and many states in Mexico in allowing same-sex couples to marry in Latin America.

Six of the court’s nine judges approved the ruling that ‘all people are free to choose independently to start a family in keeping with their sexual orientation…receiving equal treatment under the constitution and the law’.

‘The judges affirmed by a majority that marriage between people of the same sex does not violate constitutional order,’ presiding Judge Maria Victoria Calle told the court.

‘The current definition of the institution of marriage in civil law applies to them in the same way as it does for couples of the same sex.’

The decision will be recorded as an irrevocable constitutional ruling within a month, making it legally valid.

Same-sex couples were previously allowed to form civil partnerships, but this ruling will allow them the same marriage rights as opposite-sex couples.