News
Mexican same-sex couples seek marriage rights
Country’s Supreme Court last December struck down Oaxaca gay nuptials ban
Mexican lawyer Alex Ali Mendez Diaz (Photo courtesy of Alex Ali Mendez Diaz)
The movement for marriage rights for same-sex couples in Mexico continues to gain momentum as more gays and lesbians across the country seek the ability to exchange vows.
A gay couple in the city of Mérida in the state of Yucatán on Aug. 8 tied the knot after a federal judge in July said the two men could marry. A judge in the state of Chihuahua in which Ciudad Juarez is located on Aug. 19 ruled in favor of five same-sex couples who had sought legal recourse — known as an “amparo” in the Mexican judicial system — that would allow them to marry.
A judge in the state of México, which is outside Mexico City, the country’s capital, in June ruled in support of four same-sex couples who had sought marriage rights. Local authorities appealed the decision.
Gays and lesbians in the states of Colima; Baja California; Guanajuato; Morales and Jalisco, in which Guadalajara and the resort city of Puerto Vallarta are located, have also petitioned local authorities to extend marriage rights to them.
These developments are taking place nearly a year after the Mexican Supreme Court found a Oaxacan law that bans same-sex marriage unconstitutional.
Three couples tried to apply for marriage licenses in the state, but local authorities denied their applications. Lawyer Alex Alí Méndez Díaz filed lawsuits on behalf of two of the couples in August 2011 and a third in January 2012.
The justices unveiled their decision in February.
One of the Oaxacan couples that sought the right to marry tied the knot in March in what Méndez told the Washington Blade is the first same-sex marriage to take place in Mexico under a court order. He said a second couple will exchange vows in December, but the third couple will not marry in what Méndez described as a “symbol of solidarity with the local LGBT movement” over “legislative indifference to make the necessary reforms” to avoid bringing the issue to the Mexican federal courts.
Fourteen countries, along with 13 states and D.C. allow gays and lesbians to legally marry.
Mexico City in 2010 extended marriage rights to same-sex couples. The Mexican Supreme Court has ruled other states must recognize gay marriages legally performed in the Mexican capital.
Gays and lesbians have also exchanged vows in the state of Quintana Roo on the Yucatán Peninsula in which Cancún is located. The state of Coahuila offers property and inheritance rights and other limited legal protections to same-sex couples.
Opposition to marriage rights for same-sex couples in Mexico remains in spite of recent advances on the issue.
Congresswoman Ana María Jiménez Ortiz, who represents the conservative political party PAN in the state of Puebla outside Mexico City, last month sparked controversy when she suggested officials should allow marriage only for “people that can look at each other in the eye while having sexual intercourse.”
“[That is] something that does not happen in homosexual couples,” she said.
Catholic groups in the month after the Mexican Supreme Court released its Oaxaca ruling submitted to the country’s Congress a petition against marriage rights for same-sex couples with 23,000 signatures.
“One can say that the rulings announced last December with respect to the Oaxacan cases mean the possibility that marriage equality is possible throughout Mexico through the judicial process,” Méndez told the Blade. “Unfortunately established moral and religious prejudices in the same state institutions have impeded any rapid movement on the issue.”
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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