GLBT RIGHTS IN LATIN AMERICA: A TALE OF THREE COUNTRIES

GLBT MARRIAGE APPROVED IN MEXICO AND THE CHURCH GOES ON THE ATTACK

The legislative assembly of Mexico City approved a same-sex marriage bill in December, just three years after having approved a civil union law. Some assembly members linked to the Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD), the largest party in the city, had threatened to oppose the bill because it didn’t go far enough. They argued that adoptions by same-sex couples should also be permitted. They were able to introduce and, surprisingly, pass, an amendment that widened the law to include this proposal. Attacks by the Catholic Church and its allies in right-wing parties like the Partido Acción Nacional (PAN) came fast and furious, and continue. The PAN is the party of Felipe Calderón, who assumed the presidency after disputed elections in 2006. The president of the PAN, Mariana Gómez del Campo, is the young, ambitious cousin of Calderón’s wife, Margarita Zavala del Campo. She was shocked, shocked, that children would be adopted by gay couples. Unfortunately, her stance in favor of child protection doesn’t extend to denouncing another cousin of hers and of Margarita Zavala Gómez del Campo, Marcía Gómez del Campo, one of the owners of the ABC child care center in Sonora, Hermosillo, where 44 children died in a fire caused by her negligence last summer. (Ten people are in jail for the botched butt-lift surgery of pop singer Alejandra Guzmán; no one is in jail for killing these children.)

Norberto Rivera is the cardenal of Mexico City. He was indicted in Los Angeles several years ago, along with Cardenal Roger Mahony, for covering for a priest who sexually abused children in both countries. Rivera avoided trial on a jurisdictional technicality and retains his title as one of the main spokespersons for the holy trinity—church leaders, the federal government, and the business class—that runs things with the participation of most mass media. (The PAN was founded in the 1930s as a Catholic party to curb revolutionary and liberal “excesses” and won the presidency with Vicente Fox in 2000.) Rivera continually calls the new law “perverse.” He made similar comments about the recent legalization of abortion in the city; his predecessors said the same of laws to permit divorce, to permit women to vote…Juan Sandoval Íñiguez, cardinal of Guadalajara, said that if we’re going to legalize same-sex marriage, “then we should legalize murder, drug trafficking, and any other activity that’s in fashion. What are laws for? To maintain order or to legalize what happens on the streets?”

The federal government is putting all its weight behind an attempt to overturn the law in the supreme court. Calderón personally didn’t chime in until February 2, when, from Tokyo, he said: “The constitution of the republic speaks explicitly of marriage between a man and a woman.” The writers Carlos Monsiváis, Jenaro Villamil, and Jesús Ramírez Cuevas responded:

“It would be good of him to provide us with a photocopy of the constitution that he’s using, because in the one that’s in common circulation, his explicit reference is not to be found. It speaks of the family, without specifying, as the clergy and the department of justice now wish, that a family consists of father, mother, children, confessor, and grandchildren. This lack of clarity is surely due to the Jacobinist atheism or lack of foresight of the writers of the constitution, or to the fact that at the Catholic law school that Calderón attended, they use a different constitution. “

Monsiváis and company continue:
“The constitution that circulates in the secular world does say, in Árticle 4: ‘Men and women are equal under the law. This protects the organization and development of the family.’ And Article 1 says: ‘It is prohibited to discriminate based on national or ethnic origin,, gender, age, disabilities, social condition, health conditions, religion, opinions, preferences, marital status or any other criteria that go against human dignity or have as their purpose the curtailment or elimination of the rights and liberties of the people.’ We repeat: Where do they find the legal basis to assert that equality between men and women is equal to marriage between men and women?”

When the abortion liberalization was passed, the backlash included the passage of extreme anti-abortion laws in 18 states. There are women in jail in Mexico today for having undergone abortion. Will a similar anti-GLBT legal backlash occur? Maybe not: the other major political party, the Partido de la Revolución Institucional (PRI), colluded with the PAN in the anti-abortion crusade but doesn’t appear willing to spend its political capital in a prolonged anti-gay campaign. This doesn’t mean, though, that we should underestimate the repressive power of church-state-capital collusion. Meanwhile, the first legal same-sex marriages in Latin America will occur in Mexico City this month.

CUBA: RAÚL’S DAUGHTER IN THE VANGUARD?
Mariela Castro Espín is the daughter of Cuban president Raúl Castro and of the late revolutionary leader Wilma Espín. She’s a sexologist and director of the Centro Nacional de Educación Sexual (CENESEX) in Cuba.
In a recent press conference, Castro Espín spoke of the level of high-level government support her efforts to fight homophobia have in Cuba: “We have political support, with resources and decisions, but there is resistance and there are contradictions when it comes time to make a decision. But that’s good, because when there are contradictions, there’s also learning.”
She expressed hope that civil unions (but not same-sex marriage) would be approved in Cuba this year and added: “Congratulations to Mexico! At least in Mexico City, weddings and adoptions have already been approved. They achieved to two goals to which there is most resistance. She added that CENESEX is proposing a law change that will permit transgender to change their legal gender identity without undergoing (free) surgery: “We’ll keep knocking on doors trying to pass a new Family Code that recognizes the rights of sexual minorities, in spite of the prejudices that are at the root of resistance to change.”

HONDURAS: GAY ACTIVIST MURDERED BY COUP SUPPORTERS
The worst news for last: Various media, including Seattle Gay News and the usually-reactionary Miami Herald, report the murder of gay activist Walter Trochez in Honduras late last year. He’s one of 18 gay and transgender men (and one of hundreds of grassroots activists) murdered since the U.S.-condoned military coup last summer. Other reports suggest that one of the acts of deposed president Manuel Zelaya that caused the aforementioned trinity of church,state (congressional, judicial, military sectors in this case), and capital to move against him was his support for what are known in Latin America as sexual rights. The worst military and death squad violence, so far, occurred after the coup and before the installation of the new, generally unrecognized president Porfirio Lobo. Lobo is the handpicked successor of coup leader Roberto Micheletti, and there is no particular reason to believe that a transition to democracy is taking place.