September 2nd, 2014
The Congress of Coahuila, a northern state in Mexico, approved same sex marriages on Monday.
The legislators modified more than 40 articles of the State’s Civil Law to give all the rights and obligations of a heterosexual marriage to homosexual couples.
Before the reform, marriage in the state was defined as the union of a man and a woman in order to procreate.
With the changes, the article now states that marriage is “the union between two people with the possibility of procreating or adopting.” said the local congressman that promoted the reform, Samuel Acevedo, according to EFE news agency.
Coahuila is the first of Mexico’s 31 states to enact marriage equality. The Federal District acted similarly in 2009, and in 2011 in the state of Quintana Roo, a local judge pointed out that the local law made no mention of the gender of marriage participants. And two other states are part way through a lengthy judicial process which would find the ban on same-sex marriages to violate the constitutional rights of citizens. Marriages conducted in any Mexican state or the Federal District are recognized throughout the country.
Until 1836, Coahuila included the territory that is now Texas.
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Ben in oakland
September 2nd, 2014
I wrote this in my recent travelogue from Mexico:
There were a lot more things I saw in Mexico City. One thing that truly gladdened my heart was seeing gay couples walking hand in hand, and not just on the Zona Rosa, which is the more-or-less gay district. I also saw them in Guadlajara. This was probably nearly inconceivable 15 years ago. They were primarily fairly young men, far fewer women, and an occasional middle aged couple. Mexico City has marriage equality, and those marriages are legal throughout Mexico. Several other states more-or-less have it, and the country is within a couple of years at most of having it nationwide.
What on earth is wrong with our country, apart from a prurient and fearful obsession about The Other, and an equally prurient and fearful obsession about God and what is truly important to him/her/it/them? Is it simply an ancient, durable, and vicious bigotry, given the thinnest veneer of “respectability” by calling it sincere religious belief? Or a religious and fearful rage against The Other for not knowing their “place”? Though I’ve seen it my whole life, I cannot understand devoting one’s life to making other people less than, except that there does seem to be good money in it.
Anyway, I was happy to see it, however nascent. It is another sign that the work that I have been doing for over 40 years has been worth it, and is, ummm, bearing fruit.
Paul Douglas
September 3rd, 2014
I think the reactionary christianist and other fundagelicals of faith are actually a little fearful that maybe they’ve made the wrong bet à la Pascal. Maybe their Bronze-aged Semitic War God really is illusionary and maybe they will have wasted their lives on a religious chimera. Their unwarranted anger and aggression towards marriage equality smacks of fearfulness that others might actually enjoy their brief life in the universe more than they are. Its been obvious to me for 40 years that the thing that drives fundagelicals to their most furious rage is to see nonbelievers or LGBT people happy and content with their lives.
Live life well. Its the best way to drive them crazy.
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