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KLMNO THE WORLD


Gay marriage passes last vote in Argentina


CHURCH HAD FOUGHT BILL


Activists celebrate a first in Latin America


by Juan Forero


It was 4:05 a.m. and frigid out- side the Congress building in Buenos Aires as Argentine law- makers voted Thursday to legal- ize same-sex marriage, but Mar- cel Marquez was still there. He had waited through 14 hours of debate for the moment that would make his country the first in overwhelmingly Catholic Latin America to grant gay couples the same rights as heterosexual ones. “For me, it was incredible,” said


Marquez, 41, a philosophy teach- er who now plans to marry his partner, Mariano Tissone, 37. “Everyone exploded — scream- ing, dancing, hugging, some sing- ing the national anthem.” The Senate voted 33 to 27 in fa- vor of the bill, which the lower house had approved in May with strong backing from President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. The vote — which also made Ar- gentina the second country in the Americas, after Canada, to ap- prove marriage for gay men and lesbians — prompted thousands of supporters to whoop in the streets and shout, “We made his- tory!”


Among them was Marquez, who recounted a long fight for what he called equal rights. “We now have legal recognition, given by the state,” he said. “We are so happy that the state did not stop our fight for equality.” Gay rights activists in the re- gion and beyond said Argentina’s action would serve as an exam- ple. Already, advocates of gay


marriage in Chile and Paraguay have said they hope their law- makers will be spurred to ap- prove similar proposals. Dan Hawes of the National Gay


and Lesbian Task Force in Wash- ington said the vote in Argentina also gives momentum to gay rights advocates in the United States. “The victory in Argentina shows those of us in the U.S. who are working for the freedom to marry that with persistence, en- gaging the public, in making the case why same-sex couples need and deserve the right to marry, that we can continue to advance the freedom to marry,” he said by phone Thursday afternoon. “Even in places where the odds are stacked against us.” In Argentina, the Catholic


Church had mounted a vigorous campaign to stop the bill. Posters plastered on walls featured a man and a woman cuddling a baby and the admonition, “Kids have a right to a dad and mom.” As the debate in the country’s ornate, 104-year-old Congress began Wednesday, tens of thousands of people opposed to the legislation prayed and rallied outside. They were led by Argentina’s highest cleric, Cardinal Jorge Ma- rio Bergoglio, who had warned that approving the bill amounted to an “intention to destroy God’s plan.”


A step for minorities But what observers had pre-


dicted would be a tight vote in the upper house turned out to be not so close. Sen. Gerardo Morales told oth-


er lawmakers that the bill would remedy “a situation of injustice and discrimination toward sec- tors of the Argentine society who really do not have the guarantee of equal rights as our constitu- tion establishes.” Fernández de Kirchner, speak- ing from China where she was on


A gay couple kisses outside Argentina’s Congress during a rally to support same-sex marriage. Countries that have legalized same-sex marriage


Canada 2005


Spain 2005


Portugal 2010


Iceland 2010


Norway 2008


Sweden 2009


Netherlands 2001


Belgium 2003


unions. Uruguay’s Congress also recognized same-sex civil unions. “In some northern countries,


they said these advances could never happen in our region,” said Marcela Sanchez of Colombia Di- versa, an advocacy group on gay issues in the Colombian capital, Bogota. “But now we are seeing movement forward in a number of places.” For American gay rights ad-


Argentina 2010


a state visit, said she was “very satisfied with the vote.” “To think that 50 years ago women could not vote and that not long ago there was no in- terracial marriage in the United States,” she said in comments car- ried by La Nación, a Buenos Aires newspaper. “All that has changed. We can think this has been a posi- tive step in defending minority


South Africa 2006


THE WASHINGTON POST


rights.” In Latin America, which is uni- formly Catholic and where the church hierarchy is often con- sulted on major decisions, only Mexico’s capital city has ap- proved same-sex marriages. But gay activists have made progress: Colombia’s highest court last year gave same-sex partners nearly all the rights found in common-law


vocates, the vote in Argentina puts that country of 41 million people ahead of the United States, where voters in California and other states have approved propositions blocking gay unions. Only the District and five states, four of them in New Eng- land, have legalized gay marriage.


The right place


In some ways, Argentina seemed a logical choice for the approval of gay marriage. Though influential, the Catho-


lic Church is not omnipresent in the country, which has long been a magnet for immigrants from around the world, including


Jews, Muslims and, a century ago, anarchists who rejected the Vatican. The Argentine capital, Buenos Aires, is also among the world’s most cosmopolitan cities, with numerous bars and hotels cater- ing to gays. The city legalized same-sex unions in 2002, though gays have faced legal obstacles to getting married and only a hand- ful had taken vows. Nearly 70 percent of Argen- tines thought it was time to legal- ize gay marriage, according to a recent poll by the Analogías poll- ing firm. Analía del Franco, the firm’s general director, said the country’s strong human rights tradition, a product of the fight against a military dictatorship that lasted from 1976 to 1983, had helped propel the gay marriage bill. “This is something that comes from way back,” del Franco said. foreroj@washpost.com


Special correspondent Silvina Frydlewsky in Buenos Aires contributed to this report.


FRIDAY, JULY 16, 2010


NATACHA PISARENKO/ASSOCIATED PRESS


Vatican issues rules on clergy abuse; activists call them weak by William Wan The Vatican issued long-antici-


pated rules Thursday dealing with clergy sex abuse, putting Catholic priests who molest the mentally ill or use child pornog- raphy in the same category as pedophile priests, and formally lengthening the number of years that canonical charges can be brought against transgressors. But critics called the new rules weak because they include few substantive changes to the church’s approach. The worldwide church has yet to adopt a “zero-tolerance” policy similar to one created by U.S. bishops that force priests out of ministry after a single case of pedophilia. The new rules also do not mention mandatory report-


ing of abuse to police nor estab- lish sanctions to deal with bish- ops who cover up abuse. The Vatican did, however, in- stitute a policy that angered wom- en’s groups: a provision that la- bels any attempt to ordain women as a grave crime, the same words used to describe sex abuse. Some Catholic women’s rights activists accused the Vatican of equating the ordination of a woman to the molestation of children. “The Vatican’s decision to list


women’s ordination in the same category as pedophiles and rap- ists is appalling, offensive, and a wake-up call for all Catholics around the world,” said Erin Saiz Hanna of the Women’s Ordina- tion Conference in a statement. “The idea that a woman seeking to spread the message of God somehow ‘defiles’ the Eucharist


reveals an antiquated, backwards Church that still views women as ‘unclean’ and unholy.” The new rules are the most sig-


nificant laws announced since the 2001 sex abuse scandal in the United States prompted wide- spread reform in this country. In recent months, the reemerging scandal has been largely fueled by cases in Europe. A Vatican spokesman, the Rev.


Federico Lombardi, said the revi- sions signaled a commitment to tackling clergy sex abuse with “rigor and transparency.” One change, highlighted by church officials, puts priests who abuse mentally disabled adults and priests who use child pornog- raphy in the same category as pedophile priests. Another in- creases the statute of limitations for such cases within the church


from 10 to 20 years, and excep- tions can be granted on a case-by- case basis. But that was already true before the extension. Critics and church experts say most of the new rules simply codi- fy practices that have been put in place in recent years to speed up the defrocking of abusive priests. “There needs to be massive overhaul, not mere tweaking, of how the church deals with abuse and cover up,” said Barbara Dor- ris, outreach director for Survi- vors Network of those Abused by Priests, in a statement. “As long as bishops can ignore and conceal child sex crimes without punish- ment, they’ll keep ignoring and concealing child sex crimes.” At a news conference in Rome,


the Vatican’s sex crimes prosecu- tor, Monsignor Charles Scicluna, acknowledged that the set of new


DIGEST IRAN


21 killed in bombings in southeastern city


At least 21 people, including members of the elite Revolution- ary Guard Corps, were killed and 100 were wounded in two suicide bombings Thursday at the main Shiite mosque in Zahedan, capital of the southeastern province of Sistan-Baluchistan, state-run news media reported. The Sunni rebel group Jundal- lah said it was behind the attacks, telling al-Arabiya television in an e-mail that it had carried them out in retaliation for Iran’s execu- tion of the group’s leader, Abdul Malik Rigi, in June. Rigi was hanged after being


convicted of carrying out deadly attacks. Jundallah says it is fighting for the rights of Iran’s Sunni minority. Tehran officials say Jundallah has links to al-Qaeda, and in the past they have accused Pakistan, Brit- ain and the United States of back- ing the group to foment instabil- ity in southeastern Iran, which borders Pakistan.


—Reuters PAKISTAN


Blast in Swat Valley kills 5, injures dozens


An apparent suicide bombing near a bus terminal in Pakistan’s Swat Valley killed five people and wounded at least 58 on Thursday, officials said, a sign that Islamist militants remain active in the northwestern region despite a massive army operation there last year to force them out. The explosion occurred about noon in Mingora, the main town in the onetime tourist haven. Also Thursday, three suspected


U.S. missiles destroyed a house in North Waziristan’s Mada Khel area, killing five people, intelli- gence officials said. Militants have responded to such strikes by assassinating tribesmen whom they accuse of spying, including two men whose bullet-riddled bodies were found Thursday in the Datta Khel area of North Waziristan, an intelli- gence official said. —Associated Press


N. Korea and U.N. talk, agree to keep talking: North Korean and


U.N. Command officers held talks on the sinking of a South Korean warship, agreeing to continue the dialogue, officials said. “The at- mosphere was very amiable,” said one officer at the meeting of five North Korean officers and 11 from the U.S.-led U.N. Command, which oversees the Korean War truce. The meeting was largely about the mechanics of another, yet-to-be-scheduled meeting, he added.


Senior Pakistani, Indian officials meet: Pakistan and India sought to improve their strained rela- tionship with high-level talks aimed at rebuilding trust that was fractured by the terrorist attacks in the Indian city of Mumbai in 2008. However, analysts say they expect little concrete progress from the visit by Indian External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna, who met Thursday in Islamabad with Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi.


Rights activist’s killer identified, Russia says: The killer of human rights activist Natalya Estemirova a year ago has been identified and an international search for him is


that in certain key countries the decline was even more marked, showing a drop of between 50 and 75 percent in the Brazilian Ama- zon, 75 percent in Indonesia and about 50 percent in Cameroon.


NOEL CELIS/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE VIA GETTY IMAGES


PHILIPPINES Children in Mariveles, Bataan, look at the body of a fisherman who died in Typhoon Conson, which killed at least 23 people. Troops were searching for dozens of fishermen. For more photos from the past week, go to Eye on the World at washingtonpost.com/world.


underway, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said. Estemiro- va was kidnapped in her native Chechnya, where she was a vocal critic of Kremlin-backed regional leader Ramzan Kadyrov, and her body was dumped in neighboring Ingushetia. “The hit man of the murder has been identified . . .


but not the one who ordered this grave crime,” Medvedev said.


Report cites worldwide decline of illegal logging: Illegal logging has fallen by 22 percent worldwide in the past decade, according to a re- port by Chatham House, a British think tank. The researchers found


Israelis convicted in shooting of bound Palestinian: An Israeli lieutenant colonel and one of his soldiers were convicted in the shooting of a bound and blind- folded Palestinian during a vio- lent protest against Israel’s West Bank barrier in July 2008. Video taken by a local resident showed the soldier firing a rubber-coated bullet from close range at the feet of the Palestinian, bruising his toe. The soldier and the officer, who was convicted of ordering the shooting, face prison terms of up to three years.


Colombia cites evidence rebels are in Venezuela: The Colombian government said it has proof that leaders of outlawed rebel groups are hiding in Venezuela, an as- sertion likely to heighten tensions that have choked off more than $7 billion in cross-border trade in recent months.


—From news services


rules was “only a document” and didn’t solve the problem of cler- ical abuse. On the question of re- porting abuse to police, he said all Christians were required to obey civil laws that demand sex crimes be reported. The new rules are less stringent than those followed by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, and the inclusion of women’s or- dination puzzled many Vatican watchers in the United States. “They didn’t really move the ball forward with these rules. Many of us would have liked to see zero tolerance made into a universal law,” said the Rev. Thomas Reese, a scholar at Georgetown University. “But not only did that not happen, the one thing they did do was to lump in the ordination of women in with the sex abuse issue, which just


made it a disaster. It shows how tone-deaf the Vatican is on PR.” At two news conferences held minutes apart by U.S. church offi- cials — one on clergy sex abuse and the other on women’s ordina- tion — Washington Archbishop Donald W. Wuerl said the Vatican was not equating the two. “These were just a number of issues that happened to be in- cluded in a document that says, ‘These are issues that require ac- tion from Rome,’ ” Wuerl said in an interview afterward. In fact, he said, the bishops de- cided to have two news conferenc- es to highlight the distinction be- tween the two issues. “The two are not linked at all.” wanw@washpost.com


The Associated Press contributed to this report.


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