Argentina and gay marriage

Another criticism of the book is the light treatment of the issue of external influence, especially the diffusion of homosexual identities and politics flowing from the developed West to the developing South. Argentina legalized same-sex marriage Thursday, becoming the first country in Latin America to give gays and lesbians all the legal rights that marriage brings to heterosexual couples.

Finally, it is almost impossible to understand the success of the Argentine gay marriage campaign without accounting for the direct influence of Spain, the first overwhelmingly Catholic nation to legalize gay marriage, in This influence went well beyond serving as inspiration for the Argentines.

Argentina, Mexico and Chile, are at center of the analysis. Another important external development of importance to the rise of gay marriage in Argentina was the return of a large number of gay exiles from Europe France and Spain in particular after the democratic transition in They were pivotal in transporting from Europe to Argentina many of the strategies and tactics that guided the activism of the Comunidad Homosexual Argentina CHA , the most important gay rights group in the country since the democratic transition.

Alongside the rise of a surprisingly effective gay rights movement, these foundations include social and economic modernization, the growing secularization of the public, the reformation of the Latin American constitutions and the judiciary, and the embrace of social liberalism by the Latin American Left.

Argentina has made significant strides in recent years, becoming the first Latin American country to legalize same-sex marriage in and implementing progressive policies such as allowing people to change their gender on legal documents without medical or judiciary permission.

Argentina was the Latin America country most directly influenced by the Stonewall Riots. Indeed, this consciousness allowed gay activists a historical rooting that has no peers in Latin America and probably nowhere else in the developing world. Argentina passed a bill legalizing same-sex marriage exactly thirteen years ago, July 15, , becoming the second country in the Americas and the tenth worldwide to do so.

Consequently, it is not easy for scholars, and much less for the casual observer, to make sense of the patchwork of gay marriage laws emerging from Latin America in recent years. Out of those countries, only in Argentina are non-residents and tourists allowed to get married.

As such, the book is both pathbreaking and a welcome addition to the growing scholarship on Latin American gay rights politics. These happenings do make an appearance in the book, especially early in the analysis, but they are not engaged in a manner that allows the reader to gain a deeper understanding of why some countries have been more successful than others in legislating gay marriage.

At the request of local activists, Spanish gay activists traveled to Buenos Aires to train gay activists on how to craft their campaign for marriage equality and to testify to the Argentine Congress on the need to legislate gay marriage. Even students of Latin American social movements have traditionally shunned the activism by gay rights organizations.

All of this said, the most disappointing thing about the book is how the overarching emphasis on political networking as a means for attaining gay civil rights, especially marriage, unintentionally strips gay rights politics in Latin America of much its liveliness, and, frankly, its grittiness.

Spanish NGOs financed media campaigns in favor of gay marriage in Argentina modeled after those implemented in Spain. In Mexico, some states and the Federal District of Mexico City have moved forward with gay marriage laws, with the blessings from the courts, while other states have moved in the opposite direction by banning gay marriage.

Even less is said about how Argentine activists have consistently tapped on international gay rights trends to fashion their own activism. After more than 14 hours of debate that lasted into the early morning, Argentina’s Senate voted 33–27 to pass a measure legalizing same-sex marriage on July 15, The legislation, known as the Marriage Equality Bill, affords same-sex couples equal marriage rights as heterosexual couples.

This theoretical framework is consistently and successfully applied to all three case studies. It is not necessary to have any relatives or to have visited the country before. Argentina legalized gay marriage in , by action from the national legislature, the first for a Latin American nation.

It was the first country on the continent to legalize same-sex marriage (July ), which also included full adoption rights. The analysis of Argentina compellingly shows how the contacts that gay activists made with members of the political class, the bureaucracy, the media and the human rights community were pivotal to the success of the struggle for gay marriage in Argentina in Argentine gay activists were also very skilled in framing their demands for marriage less as a right for a particular minority than as a benefit for advancing citizenship and democracy in Argentina.

Argentina is considered one of the most LGBTQ+ friendly destinations in South America. This in-your-face activism is noteworthy if only because it disrupts the mostly polite story that Diez tells in his book. The importance of this development is that Argentina, unlike the rest of Latin America, developed an early consciousness about gay rights activism.

Same-sex marriage has been legal in Argentina since July 22, Bills to legalize same-sex marriage were introduced to the National Congress in by deputies from the Socialist and New Encounter parties. While the book rightly recognizes the Argentine gay rights movement as the oldest in Latin America, not much is said about it being the most externally oriented in the region.

Argentina belongs to a small group of (nineteen) countries where equal marriage is legal. In contrast, gay activists in Mexico and Chile were less socially and politically connected than their Argentine counterparts. Despite its recent successes, the gay rights movement in Latin America is generally ignored in discussions of contemporary Latin American politics.