Brazil and Uruguay exemplify the historical and demographic diversity of Latin America
countries and so are their recent legislation and statistics regarding gay and lesbian
couples. For the first time, these two countries included a specific item on same-sex
partnerships in their censuses thereby offering an opportunity to examine the
demographics of those couples3
. Chile also included an explicit question on same-sex
couples such as Chile, while Mexico, Argentina, and Venezuela will provide indirect
estimates4
. Census Bureau in these countries have released the new statistics on samesex
married couples and unmarried partner households, although some of the micro-data
are not publicly available yet. The estimates of same-sex couples per thousand couples in
unions are relatively low in the region by international standards. They vary from 3.3
same-sex couples per thousand couples in unions for Argentina (2010) to 2.7 in Chile
2012), 2.3 in Uruguay (2011) and 1.8 in Brazil (2010), compared with rates of 8.2 in
Canada (2011), 7.0 in Australia (2011) and New Zealand (2006), 5.5 in the United States
(2010) and 4.0 in Ireland (2010).