Posted on 12/31/2009 11:17:50 AM PST by truthandlife
Mexico City enacted Latin America's first law recognizing gay marriage Tuesday and said it hopes to attract same-sex couples from around the world to wed.
The law, approved by city legislators on Dec. 21, was published in Mexico City's official register Tuesday and will take effect in March. It will allow same-sex couples to adopt children and municipal officials say it will make Mexico's capital a "vanguard city" - and attract extra tourism revenues.
"Mexico City will become a center, where (gay) people from all over the world will be able to come and have their wedding, and then spend their honeymoon here," said Alejandro Rojas, the city tourism secretary.
"We are already in talks with some travel agencies that are planning to offer package tours that include flights, hotels, guides, and everything they need for the wedding, like banquets," said Rojas. "We are going to become a city on a par with Venice or San Francisco" - the current leader in the gay travel market segment.
The annual economic impact of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender travelers is about $70 billion in the United States alone, according to Community Marketing Inc., a tourism research company that specializes in gay and lesbian consumers.
Gay marriages of foreigners in Mexico City would presumably only be recognized by countries and states that also have legalized same-sex marriage. An exception is New York State, which doesn't allow same-sex marriages but which recognizes those which were performed legally in other jurisdictions.
An Argentine couple participated in Latin America's first gay wedding on Monday, but interpretations vary on whether the law allows such unions in Argentina, and the question is now before its supreme court.
Argentina's Constitution is silent on whether marriage must be between a man and a woman, effectively leaving the matter to provincial officials, who approved Monday's wedding. But a law specifically legalizing gay marriage has been stalled in its Congress since October.
But even as Mexico City officials celebrated enactment of the law, others vowed to stop the marriages from taking place.
In a Sunday Mass, Roman Catholic Cardinal Norberto Rivera said "the essence of the family is being attacked by making homosexual unions equivalent to matrimony between a man and a woman."
Armando Martinez, the president of a local Catholic lawyers' group, said he was planning demonstrations against same-sex marriages, and will also support legal efforts to overturn the Mexico City law.
"We are going to carry out exhaustive campaigns at the offices of the justices of the peace in the city, using acts of peaceful civil resistance to prevent homosexual couples from being married," Martinez said.
Mexico City's law allows same-sex couples to adopt children, apply for bank loans together, inherit wealth and be included in the insurance policies of their spouse, rights they were denied under civil unions allowed in the city.
The conservative Nation Action Party of President Felipe Calderon has vowed to challenge the law in the courts. However, homosexuality is increasingly accepted in Mexico, with gay couples openly holding hands in parts of the capital and the annual gay pride parade drawing tens of thousands of participants.
Only seven countries in the world allow gay marriages: Canada, Spain, South Africa, Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands and Belgium. U.S. states that permit same-sex marriage are Iowa, Massachusetts, Vermont, Connecticut and New Hampshire.
Latin America also has become and increasingly tolerant place for gays.
Same-sex civil unions have been legalized in Uruguay, Buenos Aires, and some states in Mexico and Brazil, but marriage generally carries broader rights.
In Argentina, Latin America's first gay newlyweds - Alex Freyre and Jose Maria Di Bello - were eager to relax and honeymoon.
"We want to rest now. It was a time during which we suffered a lot of humiliations," Freyre told The Associated Press after returning to Buenos Aires from Ushuaia, the world's southernmost city, where the couple were wed.
The men tried to get married in Argentina's capital but city officials, who had earlier said the ceremony could proceed, refused to wed them on Dec. 1, citing conflicting judicial rulings.
I know, but to American liberals Mexico is "multicultural" in comparison with "bigoted" America. For that reason they get a pass even when they aren't actually multicultural.
Ya know, Mexico probably got bamboozled with the stats trumpeted by the rainbow promoters. “Look at all these gay travelers!” When in truth almost all would have gone there anyhow, having picked some other place to do the “nuptials” proper. (How many people get married in Niagara Falls vs. honeymoon there?) The business is not going to suddenly go cha-cha-cha and the cash registers ching-ching-ching.
With all of the decendents of Spaniard blood and European tongue being spoken in the nation, you’d think they would be down on the “establishment” in Mexico.
Why stop with just advertising to homosexuals “hey, you can get married here!”, the marriage age is lower in Mexico too
Mexico: 18, 16 with parental or legal consent, 14 for pregnant females with legal consent.
If Mexico really started becoming more cosmopolitan, the “loss” would probably be widely mourned by the Aztec/Hispanic romanticists. It’s precisely the provinciality that gives it its exotic flavor.
[Sarcasm] You must be mistaken. There is no such thing as a "redneck" Mexican. All Mexicans, without exception, are Profound Leftwing Intellectuals with correct opinions on absolutely everything. They are at one with Charles Darwin and the Indigenous Pipples simultaneously. In solidarity with the Voiceless Victims of Speciesism they do not eat meat, "enslave" animals as "pets," or use them as beasts of burden. And most important of all, they abort all their kids as a way to get even with "whitey." [/Sarcasm]
Hey, only America has to be "multicultural." Every other culture on earth is a Precious Treasure of Mankind that must be preserved inviolate from adulteration by The Foreign Devil.
Or their own Indian and mestizo population.
Come on. I don’t think they’ve had bullfights there (the real mccoy, not the “tag football” variety) for decades.
[Sarcasm] You are misinformed. Mexico has been a Spanish-speaking Catholic nation from Time Immemorial. It was a Utopia until the eee-vil Yankee Imperialist Gringo Christopher Columbus was dispatched by the hated Norteamericanos to destroy their ancient Hispanic Catholic culture and enslave them with Puritan morality and capitalism. [/Sarcasm]
Slogan winner: Come to Mexico City and blow some bucks.
Everyone needs someplace to go, and now the sexual perverts can go to Mexico. May they all stay there.
Ping later.
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