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A Minority Within a Minority

While some same-sex Hispanic couples enjoy new benefits, others fight for legal equality and acceptance

by: Rafael Alvarez | from: AARP VIVA | December 14, 2011

En español | On the day New York passed its marriage equality law, in June 2011, Alexis Rodriguez-Duarte lay in a Manhattan hospital bed with an intestinal infection. That scenario, says his partner, Humberto “Tico” Torres, convinced them to take advantage of the new law and get married.

See also: Defying the macho culture.

Despite 27 years of devotion and commitment to each other, they had no legal standing as a couple. Without being married, neither the hospital — nor any other institution — would recognize them as next-of-kin or allow one to make medical decisions if the other were incapacitated.

Two men embrace behind a rainbow flag, Same Sex Rights

— Photo by: Corbis

“We realized that we really had no rights, that anything could happen to us at any time and we weren’t protected,” says Torres.

After Rodriguez-Duarte, 49, recovered, he and Torres, 50, signed up for a lottery to determine which gay and lesbian New Yorkers would be the first to legally marry in the Empire State. They said, “I do” on that historic first day: July 24, 2011.

Only New York, Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont and the District of Columbia allow same-sex marriage. When it comes to the rest of the country, gays and lesbians do not have the choice — or the newly acquired benefits that come with it — that was presented to Rodriguez-Duarte and Torres.

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“It was a beautiful day,” says Torres, “but bittersweet because [same-sex marriage is] a right being rejected across the country.”

As gay Latinos, photographer Rodriguez-Duarte and fashion stylist Torres consider themselves a minority within a minority. While some gay and lesbian Hispanics believe that Americans are more accepting of same-sex unions than people in their native countries, the couple isn’t so sure about tolerance in the Land of the Free.

Next: The right to decide. >>

Marriage Equality in the Americas

The fight for gay rights is a movement gaining momentum in Latin America.

Argentina became the first Latin American country to legalize same-sex marriage in July 2010, joining Mexico City, which had passed a marriage equality law the previous December. Then in 2011, Chile’s president introduced “life-partner” legislation, not yet passed by the legislature. And Brazil’s Supreme Court voted to allow same sex unions without specifying the word “marriage.”

“There’s an enormous amount of energy and progress happening on gay rights in Latin America today,” says Jennifer C. Pizer, legal director at the Williams Institute on Sexual Orientation Law and Public Policy at the University of California, Los Angeles. “But that doesn’t mean the populations in general necessarily are aware of the issues or supportive. In some places, officials are more informed and leading a change process.”

Pizer and others who monitor the progress of civil rights for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people around the world see Latin America among the most active regions for protective legislation.

“The process snowballs,” Pizer says. “The arguments that having married gay people present will bring down society sound more and more hollow.”