Mexico City marks 10 years of legal same-sex marriage with mass wedding
Mexico, Mar 14 (efe-epa).- The Mexico City government Saturday marked the 10 years since the legal recognition of same-sex marriage by holding a mass wedding, which saw the participation 140 same-sex couples in the esplanade of the Civil Registry.
The festivities also commemorated the fifth anniversary of the approval of the gender identity law, which allows transgender people to change their gender on official documents, as was done by 31 individuals on Equal Marriage and Gender Identity Day.
“We acknowledge that it has not been easy to gain these rights, but we are moving towards a free society and promoting inclusion, respect and equality,” Civil Registry chief Manuel Becerra said.
Legal recognition of same-sex marriages entered into effect in March 2010 in Mexico City, the first region of the country to reform its civil code.
Since then, 13,134 same-sex unions have been registered in the capital, of which 6,997 were gay couples and 6,137 were lesbian couples, the legal services department of Mexico City said Saturday.
After the reform, states such as Coahuila, in the country’s north and Quintana Roo in the south eastern region, have changed the civil codes to allow sam-sex unions.
In 2015, Mexico’s supreme court ruled that state laws which do not recognize the rights of same-sex couples were unconstitutional.
Nineteen of Mexico’s 32 states currently allow the union, while in the rest of areas, a legal appeal is needed first.
Apart from this landmark, Mexico City has revised the gender of 4,789 transgender individuals since 2015 after the law came into effect.
“We are not going to lose the objective, you have the right to an identity and unhindered development of personality,” Becerra said.
Becerra also highlighted the first ever birth certificate to have been issued in Braille, implying the inclusion of visually impaired people.
The Civil Registry in a statement said that the marriages and identity changes are part of its human rights strategies and added that it also contemplates information campaigns about paperwork and services in a “Rainbow Caravan.” EFE-EPA
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