Puerto Rico Jumps on Board

Well, it had to happen, and it did, and predictably…

…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!