SAN JOSE (Reuters) - Conservative Christian singer Fabricio Alvarado Munoz is in a tight race with his center-left ruling party rival ahead of a run-off on Sunday to decide Costa Rica’s presidential election, their campaigns driven by dueling views on gay rights. Alvarado Munoz, a 43-year-old former television host, shot to the top of the polls in January soon after denouncing a ruling by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights that month which called for the legalization of same-sex marriage.

He went on to win the first round ahead of ruling party candidate Carlos Alvarado Quesada, 38, a former minister also known for writing fiction and his student rock band.

“This division, this war that has played out in different ways ... has hit the country hard and the country doesn’t want it,” said Alvarado Munoz during the campaign’s final debate last week, emphasizing his support for traditional family values.

“Your homophobic positions are what have divided the country,” Alvarado Quesada countered at the same forum in which both candidates sought to break out of what some polls show is a dead heat. Read more via Reuters