Constitutional Convention President María Elisa Quinteros (L) and Vice President Gaspar Domínguez (R) present the final draft of Chile’s new constitution to the country’s president, Gabriel Boric, on July 4. (Photo courtesy of the Constitutional Convention)
Chile, one of the most conservative countries in South America, on Sept. 4 will hold a referendum on the country’s new constitution that specifically includes protections for LGBTQ people.
Chileans will have to vote on the constitution that the Constitutional Convention, a group of 155 elected members, drafted. Eight of them are openly LGBTQ and one of them, Gaspar Domínguez, a gay doctor who works at a rural hospital in Palena in Los Lagos Region in southern Chile, served as its vice president.
The unprecedented social unrest that took place in Chile in October 2019 set this constitutional process in motion. An expansion of LGBTQ rights were among the protesters’ myriad demands.
The recognition of the different ways of forming a family, the right to identity and nondiscrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, among other things, will become reality if Chileans approve the new constitution. Chile would become one of the few countries in the world with a constitution that specifically enshrines LGBTQ rights.
Domínguez told the Washington Blade that the new constitution is “at the forefront of the world since it is the only constitution in the world that ensures political representation of sexual minorities. It also has the right to identity and has good rights.”
Domínguez is currently traveling throughout Chile to encourage people to vote for the constitution. He nevertheless recognizes this work is not easy because those who oppose it “are spreading fake news.”
The new constitution seeks to distribute political and economic power.
The current one dates back to the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship, and many Chileans consider it illegitimate because they feel it benefits a privileged few. A heated debate is currently underway between the new constitution’s supporters and opponents.
Several polls indicate the majority of Chileans plan to vote against it, but Domínguez said “polls do not always tell the truth” and remains hopeful “the approve option will prevail.”
“When the discussion on the decriminalization of sodomy was made at the end of the 90s some said that Chile was not ready and it was approved and nothing happened,” he said. “Then in the 2000s they said that Chile was not ready to legislate on divorce. It was approved and nothing happened.”
The referendum will take place less than six months after the country’s marriage equality law took effect.
Domínguez said “Chile has already changed.”
“The fact that, for example, eight people of sexual diversity have been elected (to the Constitutional Commission), that I have been vice president of the convention being openly and explicitly gay, shows that independently of the result of the electoral process of the plebiscite, it was already on the public and political agenda,” he told the Blade.
“It has been a lot of responsibility to be up to a task of that magnitude,” added Domínguez, referring to his role as the Constitutional Convention’s vice president. “And I believe that we have undertaken the work with the seriousness that is required and we have reached a successful conclusion.”
