By Amanda Roberson
Tico Times Staff | aroberson@ticotimes.net

A bill that would prohibit gays from adopting children was unanimously approved by the Legislative Assembly's Childhood and Adolescence Commission yesterday and will now be placed on the assembly's agenda for debate on the main floor.

The law proposes reforming article 107 of Costa Rica's Family Code by adding a paragraph banning “adoptions, made by title to an individual or pair, in which one or both people have shown a sexual orientation toward people of the same sex,” according to a statement from the Libertarian Movement Party.

Now that the bill has been approved by a legislative commission, it will be added to the assembly's agenda to move to the main floor for debate, explained Legislative Assembly spokesman Juan Carlos Jiménez. It will automatically get added to the end of the agenda, which is 200-plus bills long, unless a legislator makes a motion to bump it up.

Mario Núñez, a Libertarian Movement legislator and president of the Childhood and Adolescents Commission, praised the bill.

“Members of this commission are committed to the emotional, psychological, social and material well-being of minors, which is why, going beyond the desires of a social minority, we should legislate thinking only of the superior interest of the child,” he said. “The state should make sure that minors in this condition are given to families whose base is heterosexual monogamous matrimony, as is established in our Constitution, Family Code and Christian principles.”

Abelardo Araya -- president of the Diversity Movement, a gay, bisexual and transgender activist -- strongly disagreed.

The commission's arguments are totally stereotypical,” he said. “Sexual orientation has nothing to do with whether or not one is fit to take care of a child.”

The bill shows a “retrocession of human rights in Costa Rica,” he said. “It's highly discriminatory. From the outside, Costa Rica seems like a country where human rights are respected, but in reality there are acts of systematic discrimination happening every day. It's an embarrassment.”