An atrocity prompts change

ON March 3rd a young gay man, Daniel Zamudio, was beaten to a pulp in a park in Chile's capital, Santiago. His assailants carved swastikas on his body. He died in hospital three weeks later. Four men, alleged to have ties to a neo-Nazi group, have been charged with his murder. But the public outrage over Mr Zamudio's fate has had wider consequences: having languished in Congress for seven years, an anti-discrimination law has been hastily approved.

Chile has never been an easy place for homosexuals. The Catholic church maintains a formidable, if waning, grip on public morality. Divorce was banned until 2004, and gay sex decriminalised only in 1999 (in Argentina and Brazil it has been legal since the 19th century). Chile is one of only four countries in South America where the age of consent is higher for gays than for heterosexuals. In March the Inter-American Court of Human Rights berated the country for denying a lesbian mother, who was also a judge, custody of her three daughters. In 2004 the Supreme Court had ruled that it would be detrimental to the girls' development to stay with their mother because she lived with another woman.