by Rex Wockner
International News Briefs
The unicameral Chamber of Deputies of the Mexican state of Baja California, where Tijuana is located, voted 18-1 on Sept. 29 to amend the state constitution to prohibit recognition of same-sex marriages.
Same-sex marriage is legal in Mexico City, and the nation's Supreme Court ruled this year that all 31 Mexican states must recognize gay marriages from the capital city.
As a result, the state legislature's move could set it on a collision course with the federal Supreme Court, although some amendment backers claimed they only want to prevent gay marriages from taking place in Baja.
The amendment, however, does not make that clear. It reads: "The state recognizes and protects the institution of marriage as a right of society oriented to guarantee and safeguard the perpetuation of the species and mutual support between spouses, satisfying this only through the union of one man with one woman."
To be valid, the amendment has to be ratified by the city councils of three of Baja California's five municipalities – Ensenada, Mexicali, Rosarito Beach, Tecate and Tijuana. Any municipality that fails to report the result of its vote within a month of receiving the amendment will be counted as having approved it. (All towns and areas of Baja California are within one of the five municipalities, which are somewhat similar to U.S. counties.)
The only vote cast against the amendment in the Chamber of Deputies came from PRD (Partido de la Revolucion Democratica) Deputy Ana Maria Fuentes.
"It is our conviction that the basis of human happiness is freedom and the recognition of rights, that any restriction imposed by one or various churches or some particular morality that signifies restriction of rights or persecution of people in the free exercise of their sexual preferences is profoundly wrong and has more to do with the past and nothing to do with the future," she said. "We oppose that the more conservative groups … want to convert our state into some sort of medieval island with the double morality that comes with that."
The legislative chamber was filled with equal numbers of LGBT people and their opponents. A video of the vote and the chaotic aftermath can be seen at http://tinyurl.com/bcgaymat.
