As the Colombian Senate prepares its second attempt to vote on marriage equality bill shortly today, we speak to Green Party senator John Sudarsky, an ardent supporter of LGBT rights in Colombia.

Last week Colombia’s Senate decided to postpone the debate on same sex marriage until today (23 April).

However most commentators are pessimistic, after an agreement was allegedly reached between Colombia’s two largest parties, the Conservative and the ‘U’, to not allow the bill to become law.

While Sudarsky thinks its unlikely that the Senate will vote for marriage equality, he says the answer may come from the country’s Constitutional Court.

Sudarsky discusses the reasons to some of the prejudice views expressed last week and how they may be challenged.

What stroke you in last week’s Senate’s debate on gay marriage?

Some of the arguments against marriage equality were very disturbingly prejudiced claiming calamity will befall Colombia if marriage equality is instituted.

I think most of the prejudice can be directly linked to the Catholic Church here who is vehemently opposed to gay marriage and hence chooses such people who come up with the most ridiculous statements.

These ‘arguments’ are built around fear and misinformation: fear of the break up of the family, fear of LGBT couples adopting children and rearing them as gay, and so on.

Such arguments have no scientific backing whatsoever and are designed to misinform, confuse and install fear, ignorance and cloud people’s reasoning.

What is the broad context and motivation to this opposition?

Colombia is a country where the Catholic Church has a great deal of influence and interest to maintain such prejudice.

I say its prejudice because most children in Colombia are not born to couples in formal marriages; in fact, we have the lowest percentage of the world.

Only 1.7 in 1,000 children are born to the traditional family within the context of marriage as defined by the Catholic Church.

The Church therefore is trying to ‘protect’ an institution is not dominant today and perhaps never has been.

Families are much more diverse and complex these days and its time Colombia acknowledges it.

The Church is thus more concerned about continuing its long traditions of discriminating against children born outside wedlock rather than justice, equality and diversity before the law.

It is therefore a symbolic position of ensuring the Church is seen as the moral protector of the ‘scared’ institution of the family.

So why in this context is marriage equality so important?

The bill brought by Bendetii is not even challenging this view above, it is to simply about equality before law, diversity and equality before the law.

The importance of the debate is to bring out all the prejudice, fears and then answering such ‘concerns’ with a rational debate.

We can advocate and clarify to the public what are the real issues and what kind of prejudice is being advocated.

The conservative party is very much dominated by the Catholic Church agenda and therefore against gay marriage, and abortion.

My own party like U party, of which senator Benedetti who sponsored the bill, is a member, is split down the middle.

Some of the politicians of the Green party have been called by the Bishops and told to support the Catholic’s Churches line against gay marriage.

In essence many of the privileges of civil gay marriage, including inheritance, pension, benefits and adoption have already been won in Colombia.

So this in essence the Church perceives this bill as possible threat to it loosing the moral position of being perceived as a ‘protector of the family’ – the debate will expose that.

Do you think it likely that the Senate will vote for marriage equality today?

I am not optimistic about the vote today; the Senate of Colombia suffers rightly from a lack of electoral trust.

There is a conservative bias inbuilt to it with the countryside over represented in the Senate while the cities are under represented, which usually are more progressive in their views regarding gay marriage.

The important point, however, is that Senators do not represent directly, like in many countries, a specific geographical constituency – rather scattered voters or sectors in a department.

There is no notion of accountability or transparency and 60% of the Colombian electorate don’t know even who their representative is.

So if we want real change and move Colombia towards a more progressive rational political debate, including on marriage equality, the electoral system must be reformed.

The best electoral reform solution, to my view, is a mixed political system which will make lawmakers more accountable to their voters and represent their views.

Will gay marriage become legal without electoral reform?

It is very likely that will be the case and the constitutional court will de facto legalize gay marriage as has happened in Brazil or Canada, but I can’t see it coming directly from lawmakers right now.

The most likely scenario is that the constitutional court can decide to issue a Tutela, a kind of a writ or an individual action against fundamental rights violations – this could force the notaries to register same-sex couple as marriage.

In other words, the constitutional court will probably make the decision and move Colombia towards equality and justice, even if the Senate votes no today.

Tell us a little bit about yourself.

I am married heterosexual man of Jewish origin who supports gay marriage and work in the domain of social capital, so my main are interest is of a social scientist.

I support LGBT equality and diversity within the capacity of being a Senator, and my interests.