LGBTs Are Gaining Rights in Latin America - But Are They Getting Respect? Tim Padgett - WLRN
go to original May 3, 2016

A woman holds a sign that reads, "A kiss is not a crime," during a gay pride parade in Panama City (AP/Arnulfo Franco)

The past year’s been a good one for Miami’s gay community – including gay Latinos. In January they held their first LGBT pride event, the GayOcho! Festival, so named because it was held on one of the city’s most famous streets, Calle Ocho.

It was a big moment for gay Latinos, who hail from a socially conservative culture that can be tough on homosexuality. And it was especially meaningful for the hundreds if not thousands of gay men and lesbians who’ve come here to escape often violent harassment in Latin America.

People like Francesco Duberli, who immigrated to Miami from Colombia 15 years ago after he and the gay support group he founded in Cali were attacked.

“I started getting calls threatening to kill me, and there were two occasions I almost was kidnapped,” Duberli recalls. “One night I went out for dinner, and when I came back, all my employees and all my staff had been attacked and they were tied up, and computers were stolen.”

But things seem to have changed in Colombia and South America – dramatically. Last week Colombia’s Supreme Court legalized gay marriage. In fact, while the U.S. legalized same-sex marriage only last summer, Latin American countries started doing it six years ago.

Argentina sanctioned gay matrimony in 2010, followed by Brazil and Uruguay in 2013. In Mexico, where gay marriage has been legal in Mexico City since 2010, the Supreme Court effectively legalized it nationwide last year.

...But, even if gay people have won legal rights in Latin America, they have yet to win much social respect. Homophobic violence there, for example, remains a serious problem.

Read the rest at WLRN

Related: Why Can’t American Filmmakers Produce a Great Gay Love Story? (Out Magazine)

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Related: Homophobes Of The Caribbean: Can Gays Change Hearts and Laws on the Islands? (WLRN)

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