Felipe Calderon, president of the United Mexican States and his opposition to legalize gay marriage and calling it “unconstitutional” was overruled on Thursday, August 5, 2010 when Mexico’s Supreme Court sanctioned the landmark law. On Monday it will review the gay adoption clause.

Mexico is a federation comprising thirty-one states and a Federal District, the capital city. Mexico is the 14th largest nation-state in the world and the 11th most populous.

Mexico City, like Washington, D.C. is a federal District controlled by the federal government and are not sovereign states or entities. However, the 8-2 vote by justices of the Mexican Supreme Court said marriage is a matter of equal rights, as well as states’ rights that should include the District.

Washington, D.C. legalized gay marriage earlier this year after a District Superior Court rejected a citizens anti-gay marriage referendum.

In March U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts rejected a last-minute request by traditional marriage supporters to stop the District’s same-sex marriage law from taking effect. As a “matter of judicial policy,” Roberts said in an opinion that it has been the practice of the U.S. Supreme Court not to intervene in local matters.

Earlier this year, Mexico City became the first capital city of Latin America allowing gay couples to marry and adopt, giving them the same rights as the heterosexual couples. The law was passed despite protests by Mexico President Calderon’s conservative government and his right-wing National Action Party or PAN. Gay marriage was called “immoral” by the Catholic hierarchy in Mexico and PAN has stated gay marriage would be destructive to families.

The Mexican Supreme Court will now decide if the city’s approval of gay adoption is constitutional, and examine whether gay couples married in Mexico City are married elsewhere in the federation.

According to the NotieSe news agency, 173 male couples and 147 female couples have gotten married. In 27 of the marriages, one partner was a foreigner — from Austria, Canada, Colombia, England, France, Germany, Guatemala, Italy, Panama, Romania, Spain, the United States, or Venezuela.

Last month, Argentina became the first South American nation to legalize same-sex marriage, while the Governor of Hawaii vetoed legislation legalizing same-sex civil unions.

In another victory for our community, last month, U.S. District Court Judge Joseph Tauro ruled that the Defense of Marriage Act‘s denial of federal rights and benefits to lawfully married Massachusetts couples “offends” the notion of states’ rights as enshrined in the 10th amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts sued the federal government for not recognizing legally married couples under Massachusetts law.