Legislators in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas declared that same-sex marriage is now legalized in that state, thus making same-sex marriage completely legal in all of Mexico.  

The vote was 23-12, with two abstentions. The session took place as groups both for and against the measure chanted and shouted from their balconies, and legislators eventually moved to another room to finish their debate and vote.

Arturo Zaldívar, president of Mexico’s Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation, tweeted in support of the decision on Wednesday night. 

“The whole country shines with a huge rainbow,” Zaldívar said. “Long live the dignity and rights of all people. Love is love.”

A day earlier, lawmakers in the southern state of Guerrero approved similar legislation allowing same-sex marriages.

The Mexican Supreme Court effectively legalized same-sex marriage in 2015 by striking down legal bans as unconstitutional. However, some Mexican states took years following the decision to codify marriage equality into law.

Mexico’s legalization comes just one month after the people of Cuba voted to legalize same-sex marriage and adoption nationwide.

“We are finally celebrating love, our rights, finally on the right side of history,” LGBTQ rights activist Denisse Mercado Palacios said.

Yet even as progress is made elsewhere in the world, marriage equality may be under threat here in the United States. Take this June’s Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, wherein Clarence Thomas wrote that the court should reexamine earlier cases that made same-sex marriage legal and struck down sodomy bans nationwide. Senate Democrats are gearing up to vote on legislation to codify same-sex marriage into law after the midterms. But if that bill fails to pass, only time will tell how much America’s increasingly conservative judiciary is willing to protect marriage equality.

“It’s still kind of shocking that there are places in the world where same-sex marriage is still illegal and out of the norm, but I feel like the world is slowly accepting the fact the us gay people exist,” Non-binary senior Andrew Feingold-Fisher said. “The gays deserve rights!”