With a signature and a kiss, homosexual couples celebrated this Thursday the first same-sex marriages in Chilewhen the law approved at the end of 2021 after years of struggle by organizations defending the rights of the LGTBQ community comes into force.
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Javier Silva (38) and Jaime Nazar (39), both professionals, fulfilled their dream of getting married after seven years together and two children together, conceived by a surrogate mother.
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Meanwhile, Paula Heuser and Consuelo Morales, both 38 years old and together for 17 years, with a daughter in common, believed that the day would never come when they could legalize their relationship.
Under a shower of flower petals, with colored balloons and a notebook
marriage in hand, both couples officially came out together in
marriage of the Civil Registry of Providencia.
Visibly moved, despite the sanitary masks, with their children in their arms, the two couples celebrated with family and friends a historic event that breaks with the discrimination of a group that for years has fought for equal rights in Chile.
Since 2015, homosexual couples could only have a Civil Union Agreement that guaranteed almost all the rights stipulated in marriagebut without the possibility of adoption or parentage rights of children, something that the new law changes.
‘A very important step’
“Now we can say that it is a family, our children have the same conditions and will be able to have a better future, that they are not discriminated against for having two parents who love each other,” said Silva, who works at the SQM mining company, with his son. a year and a half in her arms, and Nazar, carrying the daughter of just months.
“It is a very important step for the country,” he added after posing for the wedding photos. “How nice to feel that we are experiencing change and that we are part of that change, and that Chile’s future is much better,” Nazar said after the ceremony.
“We are a couple and we are a family, we have children like any other and they have the right to have their parents and that we have the responsibility to take care of them and ensure their safety no matter what happens to any of us,” Silva insisted.
As they embraced after their wedding, Consuelo Morales and Pabla Heuser, a social worker and marketing worker, became the second gay couple to marry in Chile. Their two-year-old daughter, Josefa, is the main reason they both took this step.
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“We have been together for 17 years, 17 years dreaming that this moment would come one day. We saw it as a dream that we probably were not going to live and that is why we signed the Civil Union Agreement.
“Then Josefa came, who is two years old, and there the fears were revived because she did not have her rights established like all children in this country,” Morales said. “Today Josefa is no longer an illegitimate daughter,” he added.
The girl was born from in vitro fertilization in the womb of Heuser, who was the only legally recognized parental figure until they signed their marriage.
‘Husband and husband, wife and wife’
Chile is from today part of a small group of 30 countries that allow same-sex marriage throughout its territory, according to the Movement for Homosexual Integration and Liberation (Movilh).
“Now we can talk about husband and husband and wife and wife. It’s beautiful,” said the (Movilh) spokeswoman, Javiera Zúñiga. “After they told us no to everything. That it would not be possible to have a family, get married, join the labor market (…) we are taking giant steps that have been taken by generations,” said Isabel Amor. , director of the Fundación Iguales, which fights for the rights of the LGTBIQ+ community.
Since the Tuesday that the reception of requests to marry for homosexual couples began, the Civil Registry has already received 90 requests and had to open 3,000 new quotas in 2022 to meet the demand. yes
According to the national survey “Same-sex couples versus same-sex marriage,” conducted by Movilh in November last year, almost 83% plan to marry, while 91.8% will annul their civil unions to get married.
AFP
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