For the first time in South American history, a foreign gay couple will get married today in Rosario, province of Santa Fe.
Simón Cazal and Sergio Lopez, two Paraguayan citizens, will be the first homosexual foreigners to tie the knot in Latin America.
The Argentine Homosexual Community (CHA) is celebrating this union as an inclusion of foreign people into the “exercise of a constitutional and human right.”
Cazal and Lopez, leaders of the Paraguayan organization SomosGay (WeAreGay), worked with the local LGBT Argentine Federation to make this marriage possible.
They decided to get married in Rosario after the Socialist municipality passed a resolution ordering civil servants to accept marriage requests coming from all foreigners and tourists. To be granted the right to get married in Santa Fe people have to stay for at least four days. In Buenos Aires, foreign gay couples have to wait at least for three months to get a work/study visa that would allow them to get married.
After the honeymoon, the couple is travelling back to Paraguay where they will ask for the official recognition of their marital status.
“One of the options for us was [to get married in] Spain,” told Simón Cazal to a journalist. “Sergio lived there for a while and part of his family still lives in Tarragona, he could have applied for citizenship there. But when heard about marriage here, so close, literally across the river, we got very excited and we opted [for Argentina]. It was available, it was real.”
Cesar Cigliutti, president of the CHA, wrote in an official statement that “the marriage of Simon and Sergio is also an act of defiance against discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.”
The marriage took place today at 11am at the Civil Register in Calle Wheelwright 1486, Rosario.
