Tens of Thousands March in Rally Against Same-Sex Marriage in Mexico City Mark Stevenson - The Associated Press
go to original September 24, 2016

Same-sex marriage is currently legal in some Mexican states, and a conservative movement wants to stop it from becoming law across the country. (Al Jazeera English)

Tens of thousands of people marched through Mexico City on Saturday in opposition to President Enrique Pena Nieto's push to legalize same-sex marriage.

Organizers of the National Front for the Family estimated at least 215,000 people participated, and while that number could not be immediately confirmed, it was clearly one of the largest protest marches in Mexico in recent years.

Dressed mainly in white and carrying white balloons, the marchers held banners warning against same-sex marriage and demanding parents' right to control sex education in schools.

"We are not against anybody's (sexual) identity," said Abraham Ledesma, an evangelical pastor who travelled from the border city of Reynosa, across the border from McAllen, Texas, to participate in Saturday's march. "What we are against is the government imposition ... of trying to impose gender ideology in education. As religious leaders, we don't want to be forced to marry same-sex couples and call it marriage."

Others carried signs saying "an adopted child deserves a mother and a father."

On the other side of a police barricade separating the two sides at Mexico's Independence Monument, a far smaller crowd of same-sex marriage supporters — perhaps a couple hundred — listened to music and speeches.

"They may be the majority," said Felipe Quiroz, a gay activist and school teacher. "But just because they are the majority, doesn't mean they can take rights away from minorities. That would lead us to a dark period, to fundamentalism."

Many saw the massive march as the Roman Catholic church flexing its political muscle in a country where about 80 percent of people identify as nominally Catholic.

Read the rest at Houston Chronicle

Related: Four Mexican Priests ‘Outed’ by Gay Marriage Activists (The Telegraph)

Related: Pope Backs Opposition to Mexico's Gay-Marriage Proposal (Associated Press)

Related: Church Denounces Persecution from Mexico's 'Gay Dictatorship' (teleSUR)

Related: NOM Protest Against Mexican Proposal to Legalize Gay Marriage at Mexico Embassy in Washington DC Draws a Whopping Eleven People (Queerty)

Related: NOM's Brian Brown Exporting Anti-LGBT Hate to Mexico (Advocate)

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