Wednesday, July 14, 2010

An Insider's Report From Argentina on Marriage Equality Debate

A friend of mine who lives in both Argentina and the United States but who is in Buenos Aires right now sent this extensive analysis of what is going on in the country as the Senate prepares to consider marriage equality legislation:
The final debate on the same-sex marriage bill will start at 12:30 today
(8:30 am LA time), with a vote coming in the early evening.

The Argentine Senate has 72 members but 4 will be absent: 2 are in
China with the president, 1 is sick, and 1 is on leave. It's
interesting that the 2 who are with the president are both opposed to
gay marriage, while the president and her husband are the leading
proponents of gay marriage. So the president may have invited the 2
anti senators to accompany her to keep them away from the vote, or the
pro senators decided to take advantage of the 2 anti senators' absence
by calling for the vote before the party returns from China. Also, the
tie-breaking vote belongs to the VP, who is also in China with the
president, and the VP is against whatever the president is for. That
acting president of the senate is pro gay marriage. In sum, by holding
the vote while the president's party is in China, pro forces managed to
reduce the number of votes needed for passage from 37 (to avoid a tie
that would be broken in the other direction) to 34 (to achieve a tie
that would be broken in favor of gay marriage).

The pro forces claim they have 35 votes lined up, but independent
journalists count 33 in favor and 33 opposed to gay marriage, with 2
undecided or undeclared. So the pro forces need just 1 of those 2, plus
the tie-breaking vote of the acting president of the senate.

Before the vote, there will be a proposal to change the language in the
bill from "marriage" to "egalitarian family union". It's their attempt
to have it both ways. They don't want to use the word "marriage" for
fear of offending the anti forces, but they call that the "family union"
they propose "egalitarian" in order to assure the pro forces that it is
not a second-class form of marriage, and to avoid having the president
of the senate rule the proposed "invalid". That's what he did yesterday
when he ruled that the senate would not vote on the civil union bill
because it was invalid on constitutional grounds.

Another parliamentary move by the anti forces will be to try to persuade
32 senators to walk out in order to deny the pro forces the quorum
needed to have a vote. Also, the anti forces have announced that if the
same-sex marriage is defeated, they will immediately reintroduce the
civil union bill. They argue that once gay marriage is off the table,
the acting president of the senate will allow a vote to go forward on
civil unions. In sum, the opposition forces calculate that some
senators will vote against same-sex marriage if they are they have the
option of voting for same-sex civil unions or "egalitarian family
unions". And the pro forces calculate that the same senators will vote
for same-sex marriage if they do not have a weasel-ish alternative.
You can watch the live feed of the Argentine Senate debate here and here.

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