Political Parties
Politicians from the Partido Popular Democrático and the Partido Nuevo Progresista de Puerto Rico, which are the island's two main political parties, include both supporters and opponents of LGBT rights. This was most recently demonstrated by the House of Representatives vote on 11 November 2009, approving Bill 1725 (forbidding discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation). The bill passed by a vote of 43 to 6, with most Representatives from both parties voting in favor. The six Representatives voting against the bill were equally divided between both parties.
The Puerto Rican Independence Party is a member of the Socialist International, and is on record as supporting full rights for LGBT citizens. Other smaller left wing pro-independence groups are also on record supporting LGBT rights.
On 6 November 2012, Popular Democratic Party candidate Pedro Peters Maldonado became the first openly gay politician elected to public office in the island's history, when he won a seat in San Juan's city council.
Read more about this topic: LGBT Rights In Puerto Rico
Famous quotes containing the words political and/or parties:
“Wherever the relevance of speech is at stake, matters become political by definition, for speech is what makes man a political being.”
—Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)
“The democrat is a young conservative; the conservative is an old democrat. The aristocrat is the democrat ripe, and gone to seed,—because both parties stand on the one ground of the supreme value of property, which one endeavors to get, and the other to keep.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)