Argentina's Chamber of Deputies voted to legalise same-sex marriage earlier this month - after 11 hours of debate. Yep after a mamoth 11 hours they finally came to vote, 125 to 109 with 15 absences and 6 abstentions.
The Deputies were allowed to vote their consciences rather than their party's position, which is usually reserved for particularly controversial issues. So now the bill is pushed to the Senate, where its prospects are, well to be honest, on shaky ground. The President, Cristina Fernández has vowed not to veto the measure if the Senate sends it to her, although she her self does not believe in gay marriage.
It's rather a strange issue in Argentina, where things are a little confusing at the best of times, there is much, well to be blunt, chaos around samesex marriage since the end of last year.
Four gay couples and one lesbian couple have been allowed to marry following court and judicial rulings that applied specifically to each couple. Yet other judges then annulled four of the five marriages, at the request of hostile parties. Then, one of the four annulled marriages was un-annulled. So, it's a game of to and fro, throw and catch in the South American country. Of the the canceled, or annulled marriages, one included the groundbreaking one of leading Buenos Aires gay activists Alex Freyre and José María Di Bello in December 2009. .
© 2010 Copyright Jason Shaw
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