BRAZIL: 130 Couples Participate In Mass Wedding As Rio Legalizes Gay Marriage

Yesterday Rio De Janeiro became the 14th Brazilian state to legalize same-sex marriage. Over 130 couples married in a mass wedding at the state's Superior Court of Justice.

In mid-May, Brazilian courts determined that public offices that oversee marriages cannot reject gay couples, even though Brazil's national congress has passed no law on the matter. Some public offices had already been accepting marriage applications from homosexual couples, while others denied them. An emotional Viviane Soares Lessa de Faria, 38, smiled at her partner and told news site G1 "I've dreamed of marrying her since I met her." Her wife's 29-year-old son was the couple's best man. For Giuseppe Laricchia, 21, marrying his boyfriend was about guaranteeing rights. "We need to have equality compared with heterosexual couples," he said.

(Via Towleroad)

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Posted in: Brazil,marriage equality,Rio de Janeiro

Will Brazil Lead the Way in the West?

Hey Canada? Are you going to let Brazil beat you? Maybe by the time the Summer Olympics arrive there in a little over less than three years, Brazil will have full marriage equality.

It looks like Brazil will now have the same-gender freedom to marry nationwide.

Before this, though, anti-equality hate groups freaked out because a notary accepted a civil union between three people. So of course Brazil disappeared into the Atlantic Ocean. Only, it didn't. Not only did that not happen, but nobody was harmed. Here is the article from the BBC last August when that happened...

A notary in the Brazilian state of Sao Paulo has sparked controversy by accepting a civil union between three people.

Public Notary Claudia do Nascimento Domingues has said the man and two women should be entitled to family rights.

She says there is nothing in law to prevent such an arrangement.

Good for her!

Nathaniel Santos Batista Junior, a jurist who helped draft the document, said the idea was to protect their rights in case of separation or death of a partner, Globo reports.

Ms Domingues, who is based in the Sao Paulo city of Tupa, said the move reflected the fact that the idea of a "family" had changed.

"We are only recognising what has always existed. We are not inventing anything."

Yay! The BBC did not quote anyone saying exactly what was wrong with this, just essentially saying they didn't personally like it.

Brazil has no laws against consanguinamory, so nationwide full marriage equality for all lovers should be possible. An adult, regardless of sexual orientation, gender, race, or religion, should be free to share love, sex, residence, and marriage with ANY and ALL consenting adults, and if civil unions or domestic partnerships are issued or registered by a government, LGBT and poly people and people in consanguinamorous relationships should have equal access to them.

Canadians, are you willing to fall behind Brazil? Will the US Supreme Court let an opportunity to take the lead slip by? The US state of Rhode Island could leap to the front of pack if the leaders there want to. Who will be first in the West to reach full marriage equality?

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Posted in: boundaries,Brazil,freedom to marry,law,LGBT,marriage equality,polyamory,polygyny,same-sex,triads

Will Brazil Lead the Way in the West?

Hey Canada? Are you going to let Brazil beat you? Maybe by the time the Summer Olympics arrive there in a little over less than three years, Brazil will have full marriage equality.

It looks like Brazil will now have the same-gender freedom to marry nationwide.

Before this, though, anti-equality hate groups freaked out because a notary accepted a civil union between three people. So of course Brazil disappeared into the Atlantic Ocean. Only, it didn't. Not only did that not happen, but nobody was harmed. Here is the article from the BBC last August when that happened...

A notary in the Brazilian state of Sao Paulo has sparked controversy by accepting a civil union between three people.

Public Notary Claudia do Nascimento Domingues has said the man and two women should be entitled to family rights.

She says there is nothing in law to prevent such an arrangement.

Good for her!

Nathaniel Santos Batista Junior, a jurist who helped draft the document, said the idea was to protect their rights in case of separation or death of a partner, Globo reports.

Ms Domingues, who is based in the Sao Paulo city of Tupa, said the move reflected the fact that the idea of a "family" had changed.

"We are only recognising what has always existed. We are not inventing anything."

Yay! The BBC did not quote anyone saying exactly what was wrong with this, just essentially saying they didn't personally like it.

Brazil has no laws against consanguinamory, so nationwide full marriage equality for all lovers should be possible. An adult, regardless of sexual orientation, gender, race, or religion, should be free to share love, sex, residence, and marriage with ANY and ALL consenting adults, and if civil unions or domestic partnerships are issued or registered by a government, LGBT and poly people and people in consanguinamorous relationships should have equal access to them.

Canadians, are you willing to fall behind Brazil? Will the US Supreme Court let an opportunity to take the lead slip by? The US state of Rhode Island could leap to the front of pack if the leaders there want to. Who will be first in the West to reach full marriage equality?

Read more »

Posted in: boundaries,Brazil,freedom to marry,law,LGBT,marriage equality,polyamory,polygyny,same-sex,triads

Another Ally For the Polygamous Freedom to Marry

I asked if Brazil will lead the way to full marriage equality. Responding to the same story, Jean Hannah Edelstein asked at guardian.co.uk, "Why shouldn't three people get married?"

Photograph: Stone/Getty Images

And yet as we shoehorn ourselves into two-by-two formation, we're not that good at keeping our promises: as Helen Croydon has pointed out, breaking the boundaries of monogamy is far from unusual. Plenty of marriages have three people in them. They're just not legal ones.

I know a beautiful triad, or thruple. They want to get married under the law, and they have a marriage better than anything else I've seen. Why are they denied?

The government can dictate that two people should be in a marriage, but it can't legislate what will make them feel happy or stable or emotionally complete together. And if we accept that, as we do every time we allow anyone the freedom to make a decision about who they'll marry, and furthermore allow them the freedom to call each other by execrable pet names in public, then does it not begin to seem strange, just a bit, that we do allow the government to dictate how many people are allowed to pledge to be together forever?

It is not just strange, it is cruel. Some people couldn't be monogamous if their life depended on it. If three or more people have formed a spousal relationship or multiple spousal relationships in a construct that works for them, why deny them their right to marry?

Is it possible that if we allowed more people to marry simultaneously that more marriages might be successful?

Yes!

Here's a very important point...

Legalisation wouldn't send stampedes of people to the registry office in five-aside squads; for many of us, monogamy does feel the most comfortable option, whether it's because our brains aren't wired to love more than one person or because the prospect of making multiple people happy is too complex. But three's not a crowd for everyone. And as long as everyone is entering a marriage equally, as long as everyone is really going to make an effort to be open and honest to everyone else, it's probably not the government's job to tell them how many of them there should be.

Thank you! Thank you!!! It is great that more and more people are seeing that both the same-gender freedom to marry and the polygamous freedom to marry are good things. These rights should not be denied. This is why we will have full marriage equality.

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Posted in: allies,boundaries,Brazil,freedom to marry,law,monogamy,polyamory,polygamy,triads