In November of last year, two men, Alex Freyre and Jose Maria Di Bello, filed a lawsuit against the ‘Registro Civil’ for stating that marriage was between ‘un hombre y una mujer’, and a city court judge ruled that the ‘Registro Civil’ was unconstitutional by being discriminative, allowing the two men to wed. Jorge Bergoglio, the pain-in-the-ass archbishop of Buenos Aires (who thinks he needs to give an opinion about everything), then lashed out against Mauricio Macri, Buenos Aires’ mayor, for not appealing the judge’s decision (which was a bit surprising since Macri is kind of right-wing and traditional); Macri’s inspired reason for not appealing the decision was ‘el mundo va en esa dirección’ and that we ‘tenemos que convivir y aceptar esta realidad’.
Then, in December, the Catholic Lawyers Association of Buenos Aires found a judge that agreed with them and annulled the first judge’s ruling, which set a legal and media uproar throughout the country, with many claiming this second judge had no jurisdiction over the case and didn’t have the right to overturn the first judge. The country here began to split between those who were in favour and those who were against the marriage. Freyre and Di Bello’s license to wed was temporarily suspended, but finally the governor of the southern province of Ushuaia invited them over and presided personally over their marriage, once more sparking debate across Argentina.
We are almost in July 2010 now, and so far six same-sex couples have been allowed to marry in Buenos Aires, but all of them had to go through the process of filing a suit against the ‘Registro Civil’, and not all judges were in favour of giving them licenses. Then, on the 25th of May, a law allowing same-sex marriage, which would give same-sex couples the same rights as straight couples (including the right to adopt), made its way into the ‘cámara de diputados’, the House of Representatives, and after a twelve hour debate, with 125 votes for and 109 against, the law passed. It was a historic moment in testosterone-infused Argentina; watching the debate on television you felt you were watching history in the making. The funny thing was that every political party was kind of divided on the issue, allowing the ‘diputados’ a ‘voto de conciencia’, meaning that every individual Representative could vote depending on what he or she felt was right and not what their respective party supported. In one of the more touching speeches, the ‘diputado’ Ricardo Cuccovillo said ‘Tengo tres hijos: dos varones y una mujer. Uno de mis hijos varones es gay, un ser humano que yo considero que tiene igualdad de derechos y de sentimientos que el resto de mis hijos.’ It was probably the speech received with loudest applause and enthusiasm, because it was so human and personal, a Representative, but most importantly a father, demanding equal rights for his gay son.
The law passing through ‘Diputados’ meant that it would have to pass the ‘Senado’, get the President’s (Darth Vaderess Cristina) approval, and it would become an official law. The date is set for the 14th of July for the law to be discussed in the Senate, and congregations and marches for against have been going on all throughout the country.
What I would like to point out though, on a personal level, is that the Catholic Church bastards are playing dirty. They’ve been equating gays to paedophiles, by handing out flyers of two men naked in bed together with a baby on the sheets, and spewing their ‘This isn’t what God wants’ bullshit to the ignorant (and easily-influenced) masses. Also, in San Juan there was a march against gay-marriage, and kids who go to religious schools were told to attend the march and attendance was taken, so kids who didn’t show up to a march OUTSIDE of school got an unjustified absence on their school record. This is part of the Church’s plot to mobilize people against the law to try and show that ‘los Argentinos están en contra del matrimonio gay’. The Church even wanted a plebiscite, but this was rejected by the Senate, which I agree with completely, since you make plebiscites to GIVE rights, not take them away. It doesn’t matter if the majority of Argentines aren’t in favour (which is still a debated issue, since polls claim that the population in favour of gay marriage is 40% but some others say it is more than 60%). How do I justify myself? Divorce wasn’t legal in Argentina until 1987, and at the time the Church was organizing huge marches against this law, claiming ‘los Argentinos están en contra del divorcio’. Sounds familiar? And yet if someone came out today and said we should outlaw divorce he would get his head checked. In twenty years gay-marriage might not even be an issue anymore (I’m kind of hoping all the old bigots will die out and leave the future in the hands of our liberal generation), but until then it seems we’ll still have to suffer some of the intolerance and homophobia these Argentine cavemen are preaching. But there is still hope, and no one is yet sure of the outcome on the 14th of July. There is an anti-gay marriage march on the 13th of July, the night before the vote in Senate, organized by religious associations of Argentina, Christians, Jews and Muslims alike. I would like to tell them all to ‘no jodan’ or ‘vayanse a la mierda’ since, supposedly, there is a separation of Church and State, right? And if they don’t want gays getting married in their churches that’s fine, but don’t try to push your biased agenda on everyone else.
Here’s hoping for the 14th and ‘por la igualdad para todos y todas’
El Pendejo Porteño
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