Argentine Senate passes gay marriage bill

(Reuters) - Argentina's Senate passed a gay marriage bill early on Thursday, clearing the way for the country to become the first in South America to allow same-sex couples to marry.

Following more than 14 hours of charged debate, during which demonstrators both for and against the law rallied outside Congress, the upper house voted 33-27 for the proposal, with three abstentions.

"I believe this has advanced equal rights," Senator Eugenio Artaza told reporters after the debate in which many lawmakers in the upper house invoked their Roman Catholic beliefs to explain their stance.

Argentine President Cristina Fernandez supports gay marriage on human rights grounds and is expected to sign the bill into law after her return from a state visit to China. It cleared Argentina's lower house in May.

Hundreds of people gathered in front of Congress during the marathon debate. A day earlier, tens of thousands of opponents, from children to elderly nuns, braved near-freezing temperatures to protest the measure.

Debate on the bill began in early afternoon on Wednesday and spilled into the early hours of Thursday.

Opinion polls show a majority of Argentines support gay marriage, but there is less backing for same-sex couples to adopt children.

The Argentine president's backing for the bill, which also gives homosexual couples the right to adopt children, has pitted Fernandez against the influential Roman Catholic Church a year before a presidential election.

Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, archbishop of Buenos Aires, had raised particular concern about the adoption clause of the bill, saying it was important to ensure that children had as role models "both a father and a mother."

Pundits have said Fernandez's stance was meant to help bolster her party's leftist credentials. Nestor Kirchner, Fernandez's predecessor and husband, is widely expected to run again for the presidency in 2011.

Only a small number of countries permit same-sex marriage, including the Netherlands, Sweden, Portugal and Canada. In the United States, homosexual couples can marry in five states and in the capital, Washington.

Same-sex couples in Mexico City won the same rights as heterosexuals to marry and adopt children in December, under a law passed by city legislators. Uruguay allows same-sex couples to adopt children but not to marry.

Argentina's cosmopolitan capital, Buenos Aires, is known as a "gay friendly" tourist destination.

Cool - that has to be the largest country so far to legalize it.