Israel's President Shimon Peres came out for same-sex marriage today, Ynet reports:

In an interview with Ynet on Sunday while in Mexico's Guadalajara, Peres said that "even a person who is a homosexual is a human being, and he has rights. We have no power to take away (their) rights."

Peres added: "We cannot take away someone's rights because they are different. We cannot take away their right to breathe, right to eat or right to start a family. We must allow everyone to live as is natural to them."

Peres' comments came in response to a new bill being promoted by the Justice Ministry called 'Living together' which attempts to regulate some form of a civil partnership between same-sex couples.

Ynet adds:

An additional bill, being promoted by MK Stav Shaffir (Labor) and which attempt to secure equal marriage rights to same-sex couples, failed to make it through the committee a few weeks ago. Yesh Atid filed a party-supported initiative to regulate same-sex as well as civil (as opposed to religiously ordained) marriage in Israel. The gist of the bill was an attempt to form a civilian version of the rabbinate which would offer state-sanctioned civilian marriage services.