Peruvian lawmaker Alberto de Belaunde, one of only two openly gay members of the country’s Congress, has little hope that he will be able to marry his longtime partner any time soon. “I’ve lived with my boyfriend for seven years and for the government it’s like he is my roommate,” de Belaunde said. “We have no legal recognition,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. For the past three years, congressman de Belaunde has been pushing for new legislation that would allow same-sex couples to wed in the conservative nation. This would bring Peru in line with other nations in South America, including Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil and Colombia, which have legalized gay marriage in recent years.