Top Brazilian Appeals Court Rules in Favor of Marriage Equality  

A Brazilian appeals court has ruled that a gay couple can be legally married, several months after the country's supreme court ruled in favor of civil union recognition for gay and lesbian couples.

Agence France-Presse reports that the nation's highest appeals court in a 4-1 vote overturned lower court rulings against two women who sought to marry in Rio Grando do Sul, Brazil's southernmost state.

The court ruled that the constitution "makes it possible for stable civil unions to become marriages" and that "sexual orientation should not serve as a pretext for excluding families from the legal protection that marriage represents."

Read the AFP report here.