The governor who changed his mind
In 1999, a governor bans marriage equality in Puerto Rico. Years later, the same man campaigns for it.
On 19 March 1999, Pedro Rosselló, governor of Puerto Rico, signed a law that redefined marriage on the Caribbean island. From then on it was expressly a civil contract by which "a man and a woman" mutually commit to being husband and wife. At the same time, same-sex marriages concluded elsewhere could not be recognised on the island.
The law did not come out of nowhere. In the nineties, a court in Hawaii had raised the possibility of marriage for same-sex couples. Many US states responded with bans. Puerto Rico followed suit.
The effect lasted a long time. As late as October two thousand and fourteen, a federal judge in San Juan upheld the ban while courts across the country were striking down similar laws one after another. In his reasoning, he even asked whether laws against polygamy or incest would now also be at risk. Activists reacted with outrage.
Then came the turnaround, and it came quickly. In the spring of two thousand and fifteen, the island's government declared that it would no longer defend the ban in court. In June, the US Supreme Court ruled that same-sex couples could marry everywhere. In mid-July, the first marriage licences were issued to female and male couples in Puerto Rico.
The change of heart of the man who had once signed the ban is remarkable. Pedro Rosselló, long regarded as conservative, came out publicly and without reservation in favour of marriage equality years later. It was a time when we had to talk about human rights, he said.
A good twenty years after his signature, the ban disappeared from the statute books for good: Puerto Rico's new Civil Code defines marriage in gender-neutral terms.