At Buenos Aires Pride 2014

Via the Buenos Aires Herald:

Buenos Aires City yesterday held its 23rd Gay Pride March despite concerns from organizers after Mayor Mauricio Macri’s City Hall refused to take full responsibility for the safety of participants and spectators at what is a public event. Demonstrators gathered at the Congress Square to arrive at the iconic Plaza de Mayo. Around 8pm, the organizerts of the parade read a document. “For more real equality: anti-discrimination law and a secular state,” read the slogan of the march. “We don’t want formal equality. We want to feel equality on the streets, in every province and every part of the state. Never Again to discrimination,” the organizers yesterday said. “The current Anti-discrimination Law was passed in 1998 and it is almost obsolete. The law uses words that no longer exist such as “race”. But the most important problem is that the procedures established to report discriminatory acts do not longer exist,” Julieta Calderón, one of the leaders of the Argentine Federation of Lesbians, Gays, Bisexual and Trans People (FALGBT in Spanish). According to Calderón, sexual diversity organizations commonly receive reports of discriminatory practices at work, school and health institutions. The Federation is sponsoring an anti-discrimination bill, which focuses on the idea of gender identity. “But we also want to reflect other forms of discrimination,” Calderón explained.

The photo and second clip below is by JMG reader Brian.

ARGENTINA: Buenos Aires Legalizes Same-Sex Marriage For Foreigners

The city government of Buenos Aires has legalized same-sex marriage for tourists and non-residents. Via press release from Federación Argentina LGBT:

La Federación Argentina de Lesbianas, Gays, Bisexuales, y Trans hails the decision of the municipality of Buenos Aires to eliminate the administrative obstacles that prevented the marriage between two foreigners, a right guaranteed in Article 20 of the Constitution. Thus, the City of Buenos Aires has become the fourth district in the country to authorize such marriages after the provinces of Santa Fe (where Paraguayan activists Simón Cazal and Sergio López were married), Tierra del Fuego, and Buenos Aires. Australian activists Alex Greenwich and Victor Höld were just married this past Friday in the latter province.

Same-sex marriage became legal in all of Argentina in 2010.

ARGENTINA: Cyndi Lauper Calms Airport

Due to flight delays and cancellations, things were getting quite tense at the Buenos Aires airport. Enter Cyndi Lauper, who commandeered a microphone and performed Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.

(Source)

ARGENTINA: Bear Club Attacked

Last week the Buenos Aires Bears Club filed a complaint with the federal government after their meeting space was set ablaze with members inside. Andres Duque reports at Blabbeando:

Club coordinator Gabriel Sánchez tells Tiempo Argentino that on the night of January 15th, as club members and their friends began to arrive to a monthly grill-and-meet event, twenty or so individuals living in a nearby hotel started harassing them and asking them for money. When members refused to give money, Sánchez says that some of the assailants began to shout "You getting together to fuck, fat faggots!" As the tone got aggressive, club members went inside the clubhouse and shut the door. Outside, assailants pulled a discarded mattress and some trash bags against the door and set them on fire. Club members were able to open the door and put out the fire with a fire extinguisher. By then, Sánchez says, the police had arrived and kept guard preventing further violence.

Club members also report being attacked with rocks and bottles and having their cars vandalized, but they say that police have refused to make arrests. A federal official has promised to investigate both the attacks and the police response.

First Gay Marriage For Latin America

After being temporarily thwarted by a judge's stay of a Buenos Aires court ruling in their favor, two men in Argentina have become the first gays to marry legally in Latin America.

An official in Argentina's southern Tierra del Fuego province says two Argentine men have wed there in Latin America's first gay marriage. Provincial spokesman Eduardo Porter says the wedding between Jose Maria Di Bello and Alex Freyre took place at the civil registry in Ushuaia. Their marriage plans in Buenos Aires earlier this month were thwarted when city officials refused to marry them because of conflicting rulings. An official representing the federal government's antidiscrimination agency attended the wedding. Claudio Morgado called Monday's marriage "historic." Argentina's Constitution is silent on whether marriage must be between a man and a woman, effectively leaving the matter to state and city officials.

The court ruling allowing their marriage was specifically for this couple only. It remains to be seen if a precedent has been set.

RELATED: Last week Mexico City legalized same-sex marriage, but that law has not yet gone into effect. Civil unions are available to gay couples in several Brazilian and Mexican states, and in the entire nation of Uruguay.

Marriage Equality For Buenos Aires

After a gay couple won their lawsuit charging that a city law banning same-sex marriage was illegal, the mayor of Buenos Aires says he won't challenge the court's ruling, bringing marriage equality to the capital of Argentina.

The court ruled that two articles in the city's civil code that say only people of different sexes can get married are illegal. The court decision applies only to Buenos Aires. Same-sex unions in most of the rest of Argentina remain illegal. The legal challenge was initiated by a gay couple, Alejandro Freyre and Jose Maria Di Bello. Judge Gabriela Seijas ordered the city's civil registry department to honor their union. "The law should treat each person with equal respect in relation to each person's singularities without the need to understand or regulate them," the judge said in her ruling. The city code prevents people from "enjoying the rights that couples who enter into matrimony are entitled to," she said. Those rights include inheritances, pensions and the ability to make decisions for the other person when he or she is incapacitated. Macri called the ruling a "very important step," adding that "we have to live together and accept reality. ... The world is headed in that direction."

And soon, our own nation's capital! Congratulations Alejandro and Jose!