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Great Events from History: LGBTQ, 2nd Edition

Buenos Aires Recognizes Same-Gender Civil Unions

by Pablo Ben

Date: April, 2003

Locale: Buenos Aires, Argentina

Categories: Civil rights; laws, acts, and legal history; government and politics

Summary of Event

Although the first queer organization in Argentina, Nuestro Mundo, was founded in 1969, the dictatorship in power from 1976 through 1983 killed many activists and forced others to leave the country. The young LGBT movement disappeared overnight. Only with the return of democracy in 1984 did a queer group emerge again, Comunidad Homosexual Argentina (Argentine Homosexual Community, or CHA). Despite many efforts to obtain legal benefits for lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transsexuals, and transvestites (a locally acceptable term), the CHA was unable to get any law passed defending homosexual rights. However, in the early 1990’s the movement began to see results from its own battles and the influence of the international queer movement. After a history of legal persecution of homosexuals, the Argentine state legally recognized the CHA in 1992.

When President Carlos Menem arrived in the United States in 1992, queer demonstrators denounced his regime for discrimination against LGBT people. As a result, Menem lobbied the Argentine Supreme Court to grant the CHA legal recognition to avoid a negative international image.

With the legal separation of Buenos Aires as an autonomous city, queer people found new opportunities to secure their rights. In 1996, the newly written constitution of Buenos Aires included sexual orientation in an antidiscrimination law, and in December, 2002, the Buenos Aires city council approved civil unions for people of the same gender. The law was passed with strong pressure from the queer movement, whose members remained in the city council chambers during the entire debate in order to pressure legislators on behalf of the queer movement.

The civil union law was passed in a social environment in which the influence of the Roman Catholic Church had been strongly undermined by a child abuse scandal. Julio Cesar Grassi, a priest whose television and media appearances gave him a high public profile, was found guilty of systematically raping children. As the most public figure of the Catholic Church at the time, he had damaged the Church’s image profoundly. The Church’s refusal to take a strong stance against Grassi worked against the institution itself. In this environment, it was difficult for the Church to raise a moral voice against civil unions, especially at a time when the crisis had mobilized an important sector of the population toward the political left.

The city council’s approval of civil unions was also an attempt to appear “modern” and “civilized” at a time that saw a brutal economic and political crisis and the state had lost credibility. The law took effect in April, 2003, with the creation of a Public Register for Civil Unions, and it allowed the union between any two adults to be officially recognized within the city limits. To apply for civil union, both members of the couple had to be legal residents of the city of Buenos Aires, and they had to prove that their relationship had been stable and public for at least two years.

Significance

The law was more important in terms of its political consequences in Argentina and Latin America than for the rights it provided. There were attempts to extend civil unions to the entire province of Buenos Aires, and the law encouraged debate in other countries where similar discussions had been waiting for public expression. This was the case in the Mexico City municipal council and the Brazilian and Colombian congresses. The new law did not deal with inheritance or adoption, two main rights heterosexuals legally enjoy through marriage. The law equally granted to civil unions some welfare rights granted to those in heterosexual marriages, such as joint health coverage. However, this right applied only to city employees. Other benefits included family leave and the legal right to make decisions for a partner in case of illness.

Despite the limitations of the Buenos Aires civil union law, symbolically it meant a step forward for the LGBT community. The first union took place in July, 2003, between Cesar Cigliutti (forty-five years old) and Marcelo Suntheim (thirty-five years old), and it received full media coverage. Despite Church opposition, a growing number of people in Buenos Aires supported civil unions. As part of the same process, new laws on reproductive rights were passed both at a city and national level, and there now was a debate about a proposed law on sex education that made discussion of queer identities mandatory while forbidding discriminatory references.

In August, 2003, the Vatican urged legislatures in predominantly Catholic countries to stop voting for measures that violate “nature” and “Christian values.” The Catholic Church, despite numerous scandals in the first few years of the twenty-first century involving priests, consistently argued against lesbian and gay rights, basing its arguments on the support of heterosexual marriage. Priests continued to oppose not only civil unions but also sexual minorities and transgender people in general, especially the most visible, such as artists and actors.

After the civil union law was passed in Buenos Aires, the Mexican LGBT movement pushed for the renewal of the discussion of a bill legalizing “domestic partnership” in the municipal legislature. This bill would cover any two people who lived together, assuring bank credits and some of the social welfare benefits provided by the Mexican state. Although Chile still had not approved heterosexual divorce, the Homosexual Integration and Liberation Movement lobbied the Chamber of Deputies to pass a bill assuring inheritance and common property for all those who lived together. In Colombia, some senators tried to pass a law granting queer couples many of the legal rights enjoyed by heterosexuals.

In 2010, the Argentine Senate voted in favor of a bill that legalized same-gender marriage throughout Argentina. In the second decade of the 21st century, several other Latin American countries followed suit. The recognition of same-gender civil unions in Buenos Aires in 2003 was an early step toward broad changes in the legal status of same-gender relationships in Latin America.

Further Reading

1 

Balderston, Daniel, and Donna Guy. Sex and Sexuality in Latin America. New York: New York University Press, 1997.

2 

Bazán, Osvaldo. Historia de la homosexualidad en la Argentina: De la Conquista de América al siglo XXI. Buenos Aires, Argentina: Marea, 2004.

3 

Berco, Cristian. “Silencing the Unmentionable: Non-reproductive Sex and the Creation of a Civilized Argentina, 1860-1900.” The Americas 58, no. 3 (January, 2002): 419-441.

4 

Brown, Stephen. “Democracy and Sexual Difference: The Lesbian and Gay Movement in Argentina.” The Global Emergence of Gay and Lesbian Politics: National Imprints of a Worldwide Movement, edited by Barry D. Adam, Jan Willem Duyvendak, and André Krouwel. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1999.

5 

Carrier, Joseph M. De Los Otros: Intimacy and Homosexuality Among Mexican Men. New York: Columbia University Press, 1995.

6 

Chávez-Silverman, Susana, and Librada Hernández, editors. Reading and Writing the Ambiente: Queer Sexualities in Latino, Latin American, and Spanish Culture. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2000.

7 

Corrales, Javier and Mario Pecheny, editors. The Politics of Sexuality in Latin America: A Reader On Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Rights. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2010.

8 

de la Dehesa, Rafael. Queering the Public Sphere in Mexico and Brazil: Sexual Rights Movements in Emerging Democracies. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 2010.

9 

Díez, Jordi. The Politics of Gay Marriage in Latin America: Argentina, Chile, and Mexico. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015.

10 

Encarnación, Omar G. Out in the Periphery: Latin America’s Gay Rights Revolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016.

11 

Grupo Nexo. “Union Civil: Buenos Aires, Primero.” https://web.archive.org/web/20030810021920/http://www.nexo.org/noticias86.htm.

12 

Prieur, Annick. Mama’s House, Mexico City: On Transvestites, Queens, and Machos. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998.

13 

Schaefer, Claudia. Danger Zones: Homosexuality, National Identity, and Mexican Culture. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1996.

See Also:

1981: Gay and Lesbian Palimony Suits Emerge; November 6, 1984: West Hollywood Incorporates with Majority Gay and Lesbian City Council; December 4, 1984: Berkeley Extends Benefits to Domestic Partners of City Employees; 1992: Transgender Nation Holds Its First Protest; June, 1992: Feinberg Publishes Transgender Liberation; 1993-1996: Hawaii Opens Door to Same-Gender Marriages; August 6, 1994: Japanese American Citizens League Supports Same-Gender Marriage; September 21, 1996: U.S. President Clinton Signs Defense of Marriage Act; 1996-97: South African Constitution Prohibits Discrimination Based on Sexual Orientation; 1997: Ellen Degeneres “Comes Out” as a Lesbian; 1999: Constitutional Court of Colombia Rules on Intersex Surgery Consent; October 27, 1999: Littleton v. Prange Withholds Survivor Rights from Transsexual Spouses; December 20, 1999: Baker v. Vermont Leads to Recognition of Same-Gender Civil Unions; February 21, 2003: Australian Court Validates Transsexual Marriage; June 17, 2003, and July 19, 2005: Canada Legalizes Same-Gender Marriage; November 18, 2003: Massachusetts Court Rules for Same-Gender Marriage; November 18, 2004: United Kingdom Legalizes Same-Gender Civil Partnerships; April 4, 2005: United Kingdom’s Gender Recognition Act Legalizes Transsexual Marriage; June 30, 2005: Spain Legalizes Same-Gender Marriage; 2010: Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Policy is Repealed; 2011: San Francisco Issues an Official Report About Bisexuals; 2013: Russia Enacts “Homosexualism Propaganda” Law; 2013: Supreme Court of India Finds Law Prohibiting Gay Sex Constitutional; 2013-14 Uganda Passes Anti-Homosexuality Act; 2015: The United States Supreme Court Legalizes Gay Marriage

Citation Types

Type
Format
MLA 9th
Ben, Pablo. "Buenos Aires Recognizes Same-Gender Civil Unions." Great Events from History: LGBTQ, 2nd Edition, edited by Robert C. Evans, Salem Press, 2017. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=LGBTQ2E_0284.
APA 7th
Ben, P. (2017). Buenos Aires Recognizes Same-Gender Civil Unions. In R. C. Evans (Ed.), Great Events from History: LGBTQ, 2nd Edition. Salem Press. online.salempress.com.
CMOS 17th
Ben, Pablo. "Buenos Aires Recognizes Same-Gender Civil Unions." Edited by Robert C. Evans. Great Events from History: LGBTQ, 2nd Edition. Hackensack: Salem Press, 2017. Accessed September 15, 2025. online.salempress.com.