The Argentine Senate will be debating a proposed law to legalize gay marriage tomorrow morning. I had to turn off the news after hours of trying to decipher the debates and watching crowds of parents, kids, spouses, religious leaders, and regular town idiots gather in Congreso plaza bearing their orange campaign shirts and balloons and dancing to the beat of a rock band. If you didn't know they'd come to celebrate the pending nullification of the validity and integrity of thousands of individuals' private relationships, you'd think it was another futbol game.
The opposition in favor of the law is either extremely quiet, or extremely well-hidden by the media, or both! Being homosexual is not okay down here. Buenos Aires may be the most sophisticated, metropolitan, and (for all intents and purposes) liberal city in South America, but you'd never see two people of the same sex together in public, much less showing affection. Which is ironic because it's conventional for hetero couples to makeout just about anywhere they please! In a cafe, on the Subte, in a busy intersection.
If I had the authority, or the language skills, or heck even just a really loud microphone, I would like to ask those orange clad Argentines,
"What exactly are you afraid of?
"What is it that you are protecting?
"Are your own marriages really as sacred as you protest the word to be? Because last I checked the divorce and infidelity rates in this country rank amongst the highest in the world! How can you so fiercely defend an ideal that you disregard and disrespect everyday, all the while denying the mere opportunity for it to your own peers?
"Can you even use the porous and antiquated arguments of the church, when of the Roman Catholic majority of you only 20%, actually lives the faith?
"Or are you really more concerned about the well being of children lacking a healthy upbringing? If 'ninos tienen derechos a una madre y una padre' as you claim, and the only acceptable family is therefore one consisting of a biological mother and biological father, then you might as well tag on a couple laws abolishing divorce, adoption, artificial insemination, premarital sex, widowdom, oh and poverty while your at it! I'm currently living with an Argentine family that consists of two divorced single parent homes, but I daily witness more dedication, care, and genuine joy in each others' company than I'm sure most homes ever see. Are you even as good of parents as you claim a homosexual couple is incapable of being?
"The heart of an Argentine is such a wellspring of passion. Why quell it with fear?"
"Dame la mano
Dame la mano y danzaremos;
dame la mano y me amarás.
Come una sola flor seremos,
come una flor, y nada más...
El mismo verso cantaremos,
al mismo paso bailarás.
Como una espiga ondularemos,
como una espiga, y nada más.
Te llama Rosa y yo Esperanza:
pero tu nombre olvidarás,
porque seremos una danza
en la colina, y nada más. . . "
~anonymous
"Give me your hand
Give me your hand and give me your love,
give me your hand and dance with me.
A single flower, and nothing more,
a single flower is all we'll be.
Keeping time in the dance together,
you'll be singing the song with me.
Grass in the wind, and nothing more,
grass in the wind is all we'll be.
I'm called Hope and you're called Rose:
but losing our names we'll both go free,
a dance on the hills, and nothing more,
a dance on the hills is all we'll be."
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