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SINALOA, June 24, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) — In Sinaloa, a state in northern Mexico, legislators rejected a bill that sought to redefine marriage.

By a narrow vote of 20 to 18, Sinaloa state legislators voted against amendments of the state’s family code. This means that Article 40 of the Sinaloa Family Code will continue to define marriage as consisting of “one man and one woman, with equal rights, duties and obligations, with the possibility to generate human reproduction in a free, responsible and informed way.” The bill offered by leftists in the legislature would have replaced “a man and a woman” with “persons.”

While it was primarily members of the leftist National Regeneration Movement Party (Morena), of which Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador is the leader, who pushed for the bill, there were some who broke with the party on the issue on June 18. However, it was members of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), the National Action Party (PAN), and the Labor Party, among others, who voted to defeat the bill. Supporters of marriage, including the National Front for the Family, said in the wake of the bill’s defeat that there is a plurality of support for marriage in Mexico.

Rodrigo Iván Cortés, president of the National Front for the Family, told ACI Prensa that Sinaloa’s defense of marriage is noteworthy. It was in Sinaloa where “the right to life from the moment of conception” was included in the state’s constitution. According to the report, Marcial Padilla of the pro-family ConParticipación (Conscience and Participation) movement commended the state legislators for heeding their fellow citizens but called on politicians to set aside gender ideology to instead focus on “inclusion without confusion” for all citizens, including minorities. He said, “Gender ideology benefits no one, but harms everybody, especially children, because it forces all of us to call marriage something that cannot be marriage.”

In a radio interview with a local station, Pablo Beltrán of the We Are Family Sinaloa movement said his group is worried that the defeated law would have created confusion among children, the most vulnerable members of society. “What worries us is what is behind this push toward gender ideology: adoption, sex-change surgery, and that is a difficult topic that concerns us as parents. I have homosexual friends, I have relatives with lesbian tendencies, and all of them live unbothered.” He said the basic rights that LGBTQ advocates seek are already contemplated in current law. For example, same-sex non-marital partnerships are already recognized, he said. Therefore, he does not understand why LGBTQ campaigners cannot accept current law and cease trying to redefine marriage.

As for the benefits of marriage, Beltrán said a recent study conducted in 26 Latin American countries by a researcher at Mexico’s National University, Fernando Pliego, found that families exhibiting the highest levels of well-being are those led by a father and mother. Preserving that well-being for children, Beltrán said, is what is motivating his group to defend traditional marriage.

According to Marcial Padilla of ConParticipación, “the law is not made to maintain stability for nuclear families. It is made to dissolve them. There are no mechanisms for dialogue towards solutions.” In a press conference, Padilla said that Sinaloa and the rest of Mexico are facing three challenges to family life: preserving traditional families, preserving the definition of family, and making families the top political priority. Noting that in 2013, when Mexico approved no-fault divorce, only 40% of divorces were no-fault. That figure, he said, has risen to the current 98%. Adding “marriage equality” to the law books, he said, can only cause further confusion.