…not
everybody is happy about it.
The “it” in
question being the federal lawsuit that Ada Conde filed
on Tuesday to have her
marriage to her same-sex partner, Yvonne Álvarez Vélez, legally recognized in
Puerto Rico.
The couple
was married in 2004 in Massachusetts,
the first state to allow same-sex marriages. And since Puerto Rico amended
the statute
on marriage in 1999 to define marriage as existing between a man and a
woman—Conde and Álvarez are out in the cold (however cold it may be in Puerto
Rico….)
And that
last parenthesis has some degree of truth—though we occasionally think of
ourselves as backwards on LGBTQ issues, we actually don’t do badly, especially
when compared to the rest of the Caribbean. As proof, I commend you to an article
in USA Today with the
headline “Puerto Rico Slowly Warms to More Gay Rights.”
We have,
for example, law
238 of 2013 that bans discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender
identity. As well, the laws that deal with domestic violence have been expanded
to include all households, including gay and lesbian ones. In addition, our
hate crime legislation was amended
to include sexual orientation as a protected category.
There have
been setbacks. The state Supreme Court upheld the law banning gay couples from
adopting kids, and last year some
200,000 people, whipped up by a pastor named Wanda Rolón, marched against
same-sex marriage. But consider that, in Jamaica recently, a 26-year old
gay activist was
found stabbed to death; overall, Puerto Rico is doing well on LGBT issues.
Which you
might not know—judging from the comments in
the local newspaper about the federal lawsuit that Conde filed. Here’s a
sample—by no means the most virulent:
Gracias
por llamarnos retrógrados. Ahora, pregunto yo: Desde cuando el matrimonio es un
derecho civil??? Dónde está eso en la Constitución como derecho garantizado? El
problema es que en algún momento algún tipo entonces se vá a presentar y decir
que sus derechos civiles fueron cuartados porque no lo dejan casarse con, por
ejemplo, su pingüino. Es lo que llamamos el /slippery slope/...una vez que esto
empieza, dónde termina? La sociedad va en decadencia. eso es todo! [Sic.]
(“Thanks
for calling us retrograde. Now I wonder: since when is marriage a civil
right??? Where in the constitution is it a guaranteed right? The problem is
that at some moment somebody is going to stand up and say that his rights were
violated because they didn’t let him marry, for example, his penguin. It’s what
we call the slippery slope—once you start, where do you stop? Society is going
into decadency—that’s all!”)
And even
more ingenious critique comes from the perennial Jorge Raschke, an evangelical
minister who brings his “Clamor a Dios” to the capitol steps every Labor
Day. Here’s
what he has to say:
Puerto
Rico es una jurisdicción no definida de los Estados Unidos y no puede imponer
sus valores culturales y sus decisiones en lo que toca a su cultura porque en
esa área lo que impera es el derecho internacional”, dijo Raschke.
(“Puerto
Rico is an undefined territory of the United States and the US cannot impose
its cultural values and decisions as to its culture because in that area
international law applies,” said Raschke.)
Hmmm—shades
of the argument
Ugandans raise that the West cannot impose its views on homosexuality on
Africa, that somehow it’s part of African identity to be homophobic?
And
so we’re left with two questions. The first is whether the commonwealth is
going to defend the statute defining marriage as between a man and a woman. The
current government is generally pro-gay; several voices in the ruling party are
urging
the Secretary of Justice not to defend the statute.
Lastly,
there’s the question of whether the suit will succeed. One commentator, Eudaldo Báez Galib,
calls
the federal court “un ambiente bueno”—a favorable environment. But who knows?
Last
weekend I met a man from Wisconsin who mentioned that he had married his
partner, a young man from Russia who is in the United States on a student visa.
In the course of the conversation, it developed that the young man would have
to return to Russia for a period of time before being able to renew his visa.
It
raised a difficult question—how could the United States morally send back a
young gay man to a country with draconian
anti-gay laws, and with rising hate crimes directed against gay people? And
had that consideration been behind the decision for the two to get married?
It’s
easy for some people to see the issue of same-sex marriage as a moral or social
issue. But for many of us, it’s a profoundly practical one. If I die today, my
property goes to my legal heirs, in this case my two brothers. If Raf goes into
Intensive Care, I’m dependent on his parents for allowing me to visit. Social
Security? Estate taxes? The list goes on and on.
As
does the fight!
