(Update) Argentina Legalizes same sex marriage!!

[Edu]

Just a few moments ago the National Chamber of Deputies of Argentina approved a law legalizing same sex marriage (and adoption by the way). I must say I'm pretty happy about this. the vote was 125-109 with 6 abstentions.

According to what i can gather, every party in congress had some of it's members in favor of it and some of it's members against it. I don't think there was any party with more than a couple of deputies that was completely against it or completely in favor (be it a left wing party or a right wing party), which i don't know if it's a good thing or a bad thing This means that there was not a strict party line voting in this, but every deputy was free to vote like they wanted.

Now the chamber of senators must also approve it and it will become law. There is also a supreme court ruling on the subject being discussed, so we could have them giving an opinion soon too.

Maybe it will fail in the chamber of senators, maybe not, i haven't really done any math on the subject, but this is surely an interesting day down here and from what i hear there might already be a consensus between the senate leaders that this will pass after it's been debated there.

[Tuck!]

I will be ashamed if Argentina succeeds before the UK and US.

[Bo]

Good news.

[Stranger in a strange land]

I will be ashamed if Argentina succeeds before the UK and US.

well, some places in the U.S. have gay marriage, but yeah.

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

Good news.

Wasn't you against same-sex marriage last I heard?

[Hash]

I suppose this will be enough for the idiots working for The Economist's Latin American articles to call Argentina a liberal country, after calling Brazil a very socially liberal place.

[Edu]

Well, aparently the senate will debate this during the first week or so of July, so we still have about 2 months to go. I frankly don't really know if it's going to pass. Right now i would say yes, but considering there are still 2 months for the church to use it's fear tactics to influence the people and the senators leaning for the bill, i'm a little concerned (just a little though )

[Edu]

After 14 hours of debate, the Argentine senate voted in favor of legalizing gay marriage around the country The voting ended with 33 votes in favor, 27 against and 3 abstentions (and some senators absent)

This way Argentina becomes the 10th country in the world to recognize Same sex marriages (and apart from all the economic benefits and the like it also includes adoption, which for instance the Portugal law doesn't allow i think).

I must say that I'm pretty proud to live in this country right now, I'm not gay so this won't affect me that much, but what surprised me was the excellent level of debate that politicians and society in general had during the past months about this subject. I watched some of the senate debate (Which ended about an hour ago at 4:00 AM and every senator spoke, some of the speeches were pretty great, there were no threats, no personal attacks, everyone respected each others opinion, etc. And it didn't happen only inside the chamber, this bill has been a hot topic of debate in TV, newspapers and society in general and i was amazed at the level of peaceful debate we've been having so far.
I didn't think we were mature enough to discuss stuff like this, but the past few month have proved to me that we can take a controversial issue and carry out debates without violence, insults, petty threats, etc. I mean a few days ago there was a big demonstration of people in favor of Gay Marriage and 2 days ago there was a big demonstration of people opposed to gay marriage and they were both peaceful.
When the issue first started to get mentioned at the national level last year i was sure we were heading for a trainwreck, glad it didn't happen.

I'm not saying that nothing WILL happen, we have yet to see how the church will react to this (although by most polls people are 50-50 on this issue and some even have the majority of the country favoring gay marriage). I wouldn't put it past them to start inciting violence or something of the sort, so we'll see if we can keep the tolerance and respect for other peoples opinions just like we have been doing in the past months.

And also, like in the chamber of deputies a few months ago, the vote showed that every party had some senators voting in favor of the bill and some against. For instance there were quite a few Kirchner allies who voted against this government proposed law and the main opposition to the bill came from peronist opposed to Kirchner who mainly come from the more rural provinces and from the right wing parties, but even those had some of it's members voting in favor of the bill. So, the vote wasn't along party lines and every senator was given the ability to choose whatever they felt was right (which is not really common in this country ).

I'm curious to hear what the media will say about this during the day and I'm hoping to listen to some reactions at work tomorrow (well, today)

And i think the bill will now go back to the chamber of deputies because some wording was changed in the senate, but it's expected to be just a routine matter

[afleitch]

Marvellous news

[Antonio the Sixth]

Marvellous news

[minionofmidas]

And i think the bill will now go back to the chamber of deputies because some wording was changed in the senate, but it's expected to be just a routine matter

Or so you think... now.

[Hash]

Great. How did UCR and Propuesta Republicana vote?

[Bacon King]

Awesome. Kind of pathetic on behalf of the United States when one makes the obvious contrast between our own handling of this issue with the civility that the Argentine people and government displayed here.

[danny]

Marvellous news

Agreed

[Free Palestine]

Good news.  I hope that more states in the U.S. will legalize same-sex marriage.

[Edu]

Great. How did UCR and Propuesta Republicana vote?

The UCR had 4 votes in favor and 10 against while 1 was absent from the chamber.

The opposition peronists and allies had 1 vote in favor, 9 against, 1 abstention and 4 who were abstent from the chamber (including 3 guys who had voted against the project while it was in commission and Carlos Menem, who i don't think even took sides in this matter )

The Frente Civico y Social (which includes the Elisa Carrio party, some UCR members, and the socialist) voted 8 in favor and 1 against.

The FPV (Kirchner's party) and allies voted 20 in favor, 7 against, 2 abstentions and 4 didn't vote.


The PRO (Propuesta Republicana) doesn't have elected senators but looking at their anti Kirchner peronist allies and how the PRO voted in the chamber of deputies my guess is that any elected member from that party would have voted against


Looking at the City of Buenos Aires, and the Provinces of Buenos Aires, Santa Fe and Cordoba (which make up more than half of the population of the country, about 24.000.000 people) had 9 votes in favor, 2 against and 1 absent from the chamber. It's worth noting that out of the 9 votes in favor only 3 were from the FPV.

Doing simple math if we count all the other provinces we find 24 votes in favor, 25 against, 3 abstentions and 8 missing from the chamber.

The only districts where every senator voted for it are The City of Buenos Aires and the provinces of Tierra del Fuego and Santa Cruz. The only provinces completely against were La Pampa and Formosa. Every other of the 19 provinces had a combination of votes, abstentions or people absent from the chamber.
People should remember that every province and the City of Buenos Aires have 2 senators from the party that got most votes in the senate election and 1 senator from the party that came up second.


EDIT: It's interesting to see that from the UCR (that primarily voted against the bill), one of those votes in favor was from the president of the party and another for the bill was from the leader of the party in the senate (probably the 2 most high ranking people in the UCR)

[k-onmmunist]

Yay!

[Barnes]

Marvellous news

[Verily]

Is Tierra del Fuego particularly socially liberal in general? I seem to recall the whole debate being started by the governor there ordering same-sex marriages performed.

[Lief 🗽]

[k-onmmunist]

What happened to the USA? Was that Prop. 8?

[Lief 🗽]

What happened to the USA? Was that Prop. 8?

Yes

[k-onmmunist]

What happened to the USA? Was that Prop. 8?

Yes

Shame to see the forces of reaction still have some victories.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

Yeah Edu why are the Patagonians in favour? Seems curious... (Actually as an aside I'm generally curious about Patagonia, what are its politics generally?)

[Edu]

Is Tierra del Fuego particularly socially liberal in general? I seem to recall the whole debate being started by the governor there ordering same-sex marriages performed.

The whole thing basically started in the City of Buenos Aires when a gay couple wanted to marry in the first few months of 2009 , they were refused and they filed a complaint, finally in November a court declared that some articles of our civil code were unconstitutional and allowed the couple to wed. A few days later another judge overruled the first decision, the wedding was blocked and the matter went to the supreme court.
In the meantime, the governor of Tierra del Fuego Fabiana Rios ordered the civil registry to perform the wedding, which was performed, then it was later declared null by another judge and i think that the gay couple appealed that decision. Of course now that point is pretty much moot now.

Nowadays, politically the state is the only one controlled by the ARI. The ARI was in it's formation the party of Elisa Carrio (which is by all means a clearly left wing party), but when in 2007 Carrio tried to look for a broader opposition to Kirchner she allied herself with some right wing or centre right leaders the party split up. One faction became the Coalición Cívica, which included Elisa Carrio, some former ARI members, some UCR members and some socialist parties. On the other hand the people that didn't follow Carrio remained in the ARI or formed a new party altogether.
Well, Governor Fabiana Rios is a former socialist who was elected as part of the ARI in 2007 but while still having good relations with Carrio she is usually considered to be part of the faction that isn't allied with Centre right parties and politicians.
Something similar happened with it's senators. In 2007 (along with the governorship) the ARI came first in the senate election becoming the majority party there and both ARI senators have split with Carrio in 2008. The ARI also has a majority in the state legislature if I'm not mistaken.

So, it does look politically that it's more socially liberal than average. Now if you ask me why this happens i have no friggin idea.
The province has received quite a bit of people from other parts of the country wishing to settle in the area. The population in 1980 was of about 27.000 people and now it's estimated to be close to 130.000. While most conservative and primitive northern provinces have little immigration that i know off and most of the increased population is thanks to local births. I would think that having people from all around the country would make Tierra del Fuego a bit more open minded province where ancient traditions aren't really that meaningful. For instance i don't believe the Catholic Church has much sway there, at least not compared to provinces like Salta (where it's mandatory for public schools to teach Catholicism) or places like Catamarca, La Rioja, Santiago del Estero or Formosa which have been compared to feudal states.

It also has a lot of tourism. Tourists in any given year is double the amount of people living in the province, i would also like to think that it also makes a difference in having an open mind.

There are probably more reasons, I'll have to make some research

The support for Gay Marriage comes from a combination of multiple factors. The people there are more open minded and more socially liberal than in most other provinces, it does have a popular governor and the left has a strong hold in the branches of the provincial government and the national legislators and don't forget that this bill has strong support from the Kirchner's which ruled for years the nearby province of Santa Cruz (which also voted strongly for this bill) and they surely have a strong influence on the people living there.

Hope this helps you a little I'm not usually good at explaining this sort of things