Santiago (AFP) – Chile’s parliament is set to approve a long-awaited bill to legalize same-sex marriage Tuesday, joining just a handful of countries in majority Catholic Latin America with similar laws. The bill will also enable married same-sex couples to adopt children. Chile, which legalized same-sex civil unions in 2015, has been awaiting this bill since 2017, when it was sent to congress by socialist then-president Michelle Bachelet. In a surprise move, her conservative successor, Sebastian Pinera, announced in June he would seek the bill’s urgent passage through parliament. It was given the go-ahead by the lower house, or Chamber of Deputies, earlier this month, and must now be approved by the upper house, or Senate, before finally being signed into law by Pinera. “We want to insist that this bill should become law right now. There can no longer be excuses for continuing to drag out the discussion in congress while hundreds of families wait anxiously,” said Isabel Amor of the Fundacion Iguales LGBT rights group.