Gay Activists Protest Annulment of Marriages in Cancun EFE
go to original April 18, 2012

The two same-sex couples whose marriages were annulled staged a symbolic closing of the state office building in Cancun. (EFE)

CANCUN, Mexico - Gay rights groups have launched a campaign to protest the annulment of two same-sex marriages performed last November in the Mexican Caribbean resort city of Cancun.

"We just left the prosecutor's office, where we filed a discrimination complaint over the annulment of our marriage, (a move) that lacks all legal reasoning and is an act of homophobia," Sergio Monje, whose marriage was one of those annulled, said.

The complaint was filed on Tuesday afternoon at the Quintana Roo state Attorney General's Office.

The same-sex marriages' annulment "lacks reasoning and a (legal) basis," Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender, or LGBT, organization president and National Diversity Organization member Jaime Lopez Vela said.

"The whole process is full of irregularities, the challenge was presented in an extemporaneous manner and at an agency different from that specified by the law, and the person who appears as the one who complained has no legal interest in this," the gay rights leader said.

"The annulment document does not list the reasons, it simply annuls (the marriages) without citing a legal reason and that is a complete violation of the law," Lopez Vela said.

Two couples who entered into same-sex marriages on Nov. 28, 2011, were notified in February that a woman named Hilda Cauich Pool, a resident of Kantunilkin, the community within the city of Lazaro Cardenas where the marriages took place, had filed a complaint.

Officials at the Civil Registry in Chetumal, the capital of Quintana Roo, annulled the marriages on April 13 in response to the complaints.

The two same-sex couples whose marriages were annulled - Sergio Arturo Monje Cruz and Manuel Reyes Chale de la Fuente, and Maria Patricia Novelo Infante and Arely Castro Garcia de Alba - staged a symbolic closing of the state office building in Cancun.

Dozens of members of the gay and lesbian community protested what they termed violations of their rights and displayed banners that said "Closed for Discrimination and Homophobia."

The gay rights community will continue to fight for the recognition of same-sex couples' rights in Quintana Roo, Lopez Vela said.

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