Argentina's Gay Pride parade was held yesterday in Buenos Aires and they had much to celebrate as the first country in Latin America to legalize same gender marriage despite determined Roman Catholic Church opposition to it. .Since President Cristina Fernandez signed the law into effect on July 21, over 500 same gender couples have jumped the broom. They have also witnessed a major spike in gay tourists wishing to visit the South American nation
.
In the wake of that success and in conjunction with the pride parade theme of 'Let's Go For More', the GL community is vowing to help the Argentine trans community pass a gender identity law that makes it easier for transpeople to change their gender on birth certificates and identity cards.
In many cases Argentine transpeople have had to fight tooth and nail just to do so, and because of those difficulties with mismatched identification, it has caused problems for Argentine transpeople when they do interact with government Uruguay passed their gender ID law in 2009, but a similar one for transpeople in Argentina has languished in the Argentine senate since 2007. There is hope since the same gender marriage issue passed, that there will finally be movement on the stalled gender ID legislation. "The gay marriage law helped open the doors to discuss LGBT issues in Argentina," said Socialist Deputy Roy Cortina. "And that's going to be beneficial for the gender identity law."
We'll be watching to see if the Argentinian GL community keeps their promise to help their trans brothers and sisters pass this legislation, or do what their GL brothers and sisters did in the States and Canada to trans people and ignore them
