A proposal by President Enrique Peña Nieto to legalize same-sex marriage nationwide was voted down by Mexico's lower house of congress this week.

Chairman Edgar Castillo Martinez said the matter is "totally and definitively concluded" after the Commission on Constitutional Matters voted 19-8 that same-sex couples should not have the right to marry.

In 2015, the country's Supreme Court declared it was unconstitutional for states to prohibit gay marriage, but the ruling did not rewrite any current laws.

For this reason, same-sex marriages were only recognized in Chihuahua, Coahuila, Jalisco, Nayarit, Quintana Roo and Sonora, the states where it was already legal.

President Nieto's call for marriage equality in May sparked demonstrations and debates on both sides of the issue, with a 12-year-old boy famously jumping in front of a crowd of 11,000 anti-gay protesters this past summer.