RIGHTS: Mexican Homosexuals Push for Social Benefits

By Marwaan Macan-Markar Reprint | | Print |

Marwaan Macan-Markar

MEXICO CITY, Feb 16 2001 (IPS) - Edith Ramoz and Isabel Hernandez, a lesbian couple in their late twenties, are part of an emerging movement in this city’s gay and lesbian community seeking to broaden the rights of those in same-sex unions.

So too are 30-year-old Rafael Mejia and 28-year-old Miguel Angel Dominguez, a gay couple, who are looking forward to “sharing a future together”.

What the movement seeks are benefits guaranteed by the Mexican state to heterosexual couples who opt to cohabit instead of get married, including recognition of their kinship, health coverage, social security payments and the right of inheritance.

“We are moving from tolerance to securing cultural and institutional recognition of gay and lesbian life-styles,” affirmed Claudia Hinojosa, a Mexican feminist and lesbian rights activist. “We want gay and lesbian couples to be treated the same way as heterosexual couples are by the state, rather than be discriminated against.”

The city’s homosexual community used the occasion of Feb. 14, Valentine’s Day, primarily celebrated in the West and some developing countries as a day dedicated to lovers, to boldly demonstrate their quest for a life of equality.

Among those who came out in support of that event, held in the plaza outside the Palacio de Bellas Artes, an ornate building that serves as the main cultural centre in this city, were Ramoz, Hernandez, Mejia and Dominquez. They joined over 500 gay and lesbian couples in a symbolic registration of their same-sex unions.

“This is the way to claim our rights,” said a smiling, clean- shaven Mejia after having signed on the dotted line to “register” his relationship with Dominguez.

Added an equally pleased Ramoz, while holding Hernandez’s hand: “It’s a special moment for us. We looked forward to coming here and registering.”

For Alejandra Sarda, the Valentine’s Day event, which had attracted a crowd of close to 3,000 people, including some men in bridal dresses, was important from a regional perspective, too.

“Mexico has taken the first initiative in Latin America to launch a strong effort to seek recognition for same-sex union,” said Sarda, a leading gay and lesbian rights activist from Argentina.

According to Sydney Levy, director of programmes and communications at the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC), a San-Francisco-based non-governmental organisation (NGO), the world’s gay and lesbian communities have been “denied a number of rights”.

The lack of national recognition for same-sex unions and social benefits guaranteed to heterosexual couples cohabiting are but two of them, he adds.

This is reflected in studies done by IGLHRC, where discrimination against same-sex couples has impinged on their civil, social and economic rights.

“They vary widely from country to country,” one study notes. They include the denial of the right to joint custody of children, the right to adopt children and the right to inherit one another’s property.

Furthermore, spousal immigration rights have also been denied, “including the right to extend one’s citizenship to one’s spouse and children”, in addition to the rights to power of attorney, co-ownership of property, execution of living wills, and medical decision-making power in case of incapacitation.

And in some instances, the study declares, the rights to share insurance and pensions benefits have been rebuffed along with the rights to receive and dispose of a spouse’s body in the event of death.

Currently, according to IGLHRC, only a few countries have enacted legislation to ensure equality and respect to same-sex unions. They include Denmark, Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands, Hungary and Iceland.

In Scandinavian countries such as Sweden and Norway, that has resulted in the creation of a “parallel type of legal recognition with the government for same-sex couples called ‘registered partnerships’,” rather than expanding the prevailing definition of marriage.

This means that soon after same-sex couples register their partnership with the government, they are able to enjoy “most of the rights and privileges accorded opposite-sex married couples”.

The situation is very different, however, in a number of other countries, particularly in the developing world. South Africa, however, is an exception, given the protection it guarantees to sexual minorities under its Bill of Rights.

The New York-based, non-governmental group Human Rights Watch (HRW) drew attention to the lack of rights for gay and lesbian people in its annual report on the global state of human rights, ‘World Report 2001’.

“Sexual minorities were persecuted in a significant number of countries and in many ways, including the application of the death penalty or long prison sentences for private sexual acts between consenting adults,” the report charged.

Such abuse, it added, took place despite the reaffirmation in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that “all people are born free and equal in dignity and rights”.

Even state officials played a part in such pervasive abuse, it revealed. “Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals were vilified by officials of several states. Their claims to equal enjoyment of rights and equal protections before the law were routinely denied in many states.”

In Africa, for instance, the hostility stemmed from government leaders in Namibia, Uganda and Zimbabwe. According to HRW, Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe had characterised same-sex unions as “an abomination, a rottenness of culture, real decadence of culture”.

Similar opposition has been expressed by the Vatican. The Pope, states HRW, condemned the holding of World Pride 2000, an international event calling attention to human rights violations of sexual minorities, in Rome as “an offence to the Christian values of the city”.

According to Michel Masa, of the Mexico City-based Miguel Austin Pro Juarez Centre for Human Rights, opposition to the homosexual culture in Mexico is equally virulent. “It is a conservative society, very homophobic and the Catholic church has a big say over the lives of the people.”

Such opposition, in fact, is reflected in a study done by the non- governmental Citizen Commission Against Homophobic Hate Crimes, which revealed that on average one homosexual is murdered in Mexico every three days in cases of gay-bashing.

It also noted that in this country, where there are an estimated 10 million gays and lesbians out of 100 million people, some 631 murders of gays and lesbians from 1995 to July 2000 have not been solved.

For Masa, activism by Mexico’s gay and lesbian community to challenge the status quo “is much needed.” And the public spectacle carried out this week outside the Palacio de Bellas Artes, in her view is important “for them to achieve equality and protection”.