An economist and a journalist became the first couple united under Mexico City’s new gay civil-union law, kissing while a string orchestra played Besame Mucho and police cordoned off streets around a white wedding tent filled with guests.
The new law, which took effect on Friday, grants same-sex couples inheritance rights and social benefits similar to those enjoyed by married heterosexual couples. It reflects a growing acceptance of homosexuality in what has traditionally been a macho society, as well as a willingness by Mexico City — the second municipality in the country to legalise same-sex unions — to join the international debate on gay marriage.
After dating for four years and three months, journalist Antonio Medina (38) and economist Jorge Cerpa (31) were united in front of the government offices for Mexico City’s Iztapalapa borough, signing documents under a banner that read ”Civil-union law: Your right to choose.”
Dozens of supporters, including several couples who plan to register their own same-sex unions soon, waved rainbow flags, showered the couple with flower petals and yelled: ”Bravo!” Firecrackers exploded nearby.
”With this law, a history of exclusion comes to an end,” Medina said. ”Today, the love that before did not dare speak its name has now entered the public spotlight.”
City officials also praised the law. ”Love now has one less obstacle,” said Mexico City lawmaker Victor Hugo Cirigo, one of the biggest supporters of the new statute, which activists have been seeking for the past five years.
The left-dominated legislature of Mexico City, a semi-independent zone with some of the same powers as states, passed the law in November.
The capital was the first in the predominantly Roman Catholic country to approve such a law, but a similar measure later approved in the northern state of Coahuila went into effect first, at the end of January. On January 31, a lesbian couple officially registered their union, which is being celebrated by liberal lawmakers but condemned by the ruling National Action Party.
Coahuila state lawmakers from the conservative party of President Felipe Calderon have filed a court challenge claiming that gay unions violate constitutional provisions protecting the family.
The Catholic Church in Mexico also has spoken out forcefully against the law.
But that has not discouraged the more than 100 lesbian and gay couples who gathered on Valentine’s Day in Mexico City’s central plaza, the Zocalo, to announce their intentions to register their unions.
Lending support to the cause, singer Christian Chavez of the Mexican pop group RBD announced earlier this month that he is gay after photos of him kissing and exchanging rings with another man in Canada surfaced on the internet.
”I don’t want to keep on lying and lie to myself because of fear,” Chavez said in a statement posted on RBD’s website. He received an outpouring of support from fans, who lauded his courage. — Sapa-AP