News
Uruguay same-sex marriage law takes effect
South American country among 11 nations to allow gay nuptials
Uruguayan lawmakers earlier this year approved a same-sex marriage bill. (Photo by Fedaro via Wikimedia Commons)
The South American nation’s first same-sex marriage took place in a hospital in which one of the men who tied the knot is dying of cancer.
Sergio Miranda and Rodrigo Borda, who have been together for 14 years, were the first gay couple to register to marry in Uruguay.
The couple plans to exchange vows next month.
“We feel good,” Miranda told the Uruguayan newspaper El País after he and Borda left a registrar’s office in Montevideo, the country’s capital. “As of today, we are starting to apply a law that eliminates discrimination.”
Uruguay also now recognizes the marriages of same-sex couples who legally married in other countries.
Federico Graña of Colectivo Ovejas Negras, a Uruguayan LGBT advocacy group, applauded the same-sex marriage law.
“Uruguay is once again in the headlines for expanding liberty and equality,” he tweeted earlier on Monday.
The country’s same-sex marriage law took effect three months after President José Mujica signed it. The measure received final approval in the Uruguay House of Representatives in April.
Neighboring Argentina is among the 11 countries in which gays and lesbians can legally marry.
Same-sex couples can also tie the knot in Mexico City and 13 U.S. states and D.C.
Two gay men on July 25 became the first legally recognized same-sex couple in Colombia when a judge in Bogotá, the country’s capital, solemnized their relationship. Brazil’s National Council of Justice in May ruled registrars in South America’s most populous nation cannot deny marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
Gays and lesbians in New Zealand will be able to legally marry on August 19. The first same-sex marriages in England and Wales are expected to take place next spring after a gay nuptials bill received final approval in the British House of Lords last month.
Angelica Lozano, a lesbian city councilwoman in the Colombian capital, is among the LGBT rights advocates throughout Latin America who praised Uruguay’s same-sex marriage law.
“Total respect and admiration to Uruguay and Uruguayans,” she tweeted. “Equality is unstoppable.”
Iran
Grenell: ‘Real hope’ for gay rights in Iran as result of nationwide protests
Former ambassador to Germany claimed he has sneaked ‘gays and lesbians out of’ country
Richard Grenell, the presidential envoy for special missions of the United States, said on X on Tuesday that he has helped “sneak gays and lesbians out of Iran” and is seeing a change in attitudes in the country.
The post, which now has more than 25,000 likes since its uploading, claims that attitudes toward gays and lesbians are shifting amid massive economic protests across the country.
“For the first time EVER, someone has said ‘I want to wait just a bit,” the former U.S. ambassador to Germany wrote. “There is real hope coming from the inside. I don’t think you can stop this now.”
Grenell has been a longtime supporter of the president.
“Richard Grenell is a fabulous person, A STAR,” Trump posted on Truth Social days before his official appointment to the ambassador role. “He will be someplace, high up! DJT”
Iran, which is experiencing demonstrations across all 31 provinces of the country — including in Tehran, the capital — started as a result of a financial crisis causing the collapse of its national currency. Time magazine credits this uprising after the U.N. re-imposed sanctions in September over the country’s pursuit of nuclear weapons.
As basic necessities like bread, rice, meat, and medical supplies become increasingly unaffordable to the majority of the more than 90 million people living there, citizens took to the streets to push back against Iran’s theocratic regime.
Grenell, who was made president and executive director of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts last year by Trump, believes that people in the majority Shiite Muslim country are also beginning to protest human rights abuses.
Iran is among only a handful of countries in which consensual same-sex sexual relations remain punishable by death, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Virginia
Mark Levine loses race to succeed Adam Ebbin in ‘firehouse’ Democratic primary
State Del. Elizabeth Bennett-Parker won with 70.6 percent of vote
Gay former Virginia House of Delegates member Mark Levine (D-Alexandria) lost his race to become the Democratic nominee to replace gay state Sen. Adam Ebbin (D-Alexandria) in a Jan. 13 “firehouse” Democratic primary.
Levine finished in second place in the hastily called primary, receiving 807 votes or 17.4 percent. The winner in the four-candidate race, state Del. Elizabeth Bennett-Parker, who was endorsed by both Ebbin and Gov.-elect Abigail Spanberger received 3,281 votes or 70.6 percent.
Ebbin, whose 39th Senate District includes Alexandria and parts of Arlington and Fairfax Counties, announced on Jan. 7 that he was resigning effective Feb. 18, to take a job in the Spanberger administration as senior advisor at the Virginia Cannabis Control Authority.
Results of the Jan. 13 primary, which was called by Democratic Party leaders in Alexandria, Arlington, and Fairfax, show that candidates Charles Sumpter, a World Wildlife Fund director, finished in third place with 321 voters or 6.9 percent; and Amy Jackson, the former Alexandria vice mayor, finished in fourth place with 238 votes or 5.1 percent.
Bennett-Parker, who LGBTQ community advocates consider a committed LGBTQ ally, will now compete as the Democratic nominee in a Feb. 10 special election in which registered voters in the 39th District of all political parties and independents will select Ebbin’s replacement in the state senate.
The Alexandria publication ALX Now reports that local realtor Julie Robben Linebery has been selected by the Alexandria Republican City Committee to be the GOP candidate to compete in the Jan. 10 special election. According to ALX Now, Lineberry was the only application to run in a now cancelled special party caucus type event initially called to select the GOP nominees.
It couldn’t immediately be determined if an independent or other party candidate planned to run in the special election.
Bennett-Parker is considered the strong favorite to win the Feb. 10 special election in the heavily Democratic 39th District, where Democrat Ebbin has served as senator since 2012.
Congress
Van Hollen speaks at ‘ICE Out for Good’ protest in D.C.
ICE agent killed Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis on Jan. 7
U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) is among those who spoke at an “ICE Out for Good” protest that took place outside U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s headquarters in D.C. on Tuesday.
The protest took place six days after a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shot and killed Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old woman in Minneapolis.
Good left behind her wife and three children.
(Video by Michael K. Lavers)
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Van Hollen speaks at ‘ICE Out for Good’ protest in D.C.
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