They urge to pass laws to recognize LGBT concubinage

Andrea Becerril

Newspaper La Jornada
Sunday, November 13, 2022, p. 12

The reform of the Social Security and Issste laws to recognize concubinage in same-sex couples has already passed through both chambers of Congress, although it is still pending in the Senate, since the minutes returned by the deputies were approved in commissions, but it remains to be go to the full Senate, a delay that harms the human rights of members of the gay lesbian community.

Due to the above, Senator from Morena César Cravioto made a call to the board of directors of the Senate, headed by Alejandro Armenta, in order to accelerate the approval of this reform, whose legislative process began in 2019, so as not to leave the same-sex couples of insured workers who, upon death, leave their spouse without the right to social security or a widow’s pension.

In this regard, the head of the IMSS Human Rights Unit, Marcela Velázquez Bolio, said that the institute’s technical council reached an interpretation criterion on the Social Security Law with which all concubinage of same-sex couples are recognized.

He explained that at the national level this right has already been established administratively in the IMSS, but he considered that it is necessary to translate it into the Social Security Law, in order to make it more forceful, eliminate discrimination and stigma, and to guarantee these rights for all people.

In a joint press conference with the IMSS official, Cravioto referred to the case of Jorge Rocha Muñoz, who requested a concubinage recognition procedure to access the widow’s pension before the IMSS, after his partner, Josué Pérez Reyes, died of coronavirus in July 2020.

He finally achieved it last May, after a management through the legislative link of the Senate with the IMSS and Cravioto’s work team. It was an administrative decision by Zoé Robledo to guarantee the right to all couples, especially from the LGBT communitybut it must be guaranteed that it is a full right in the Social Security Law.

The reform originated in an initiative by Senator from Morena Malú Micher, approved in 2019 in the Senate, which returned from the Chamber of Deputies with changes.