Gay Rights and the local media

Last week meant a lot to many of us who live in Valencia, it felt like a breath of fresh air. First, a fact that affects the LGBT community worldwide, the adoption of resolution L.9 Rev 1 by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, and secondly, the first ever gay pride parade in the third largest city of Venezuela.

The UN resolution is an important legal precedent in the struggle of the community to reclaim our rights, historically denied to us by religious prejudice, despite great advances achieved in Latin America. The bloc of countries who voted against the resolution are places where the secular state is non-existant and controlled by the religious power.

Religious freedom is sacred as the freedom we all have to love who we choose to, without distinction to prevail in the decision. The term marriage should be rewritten in our society, since the dawn of history this word has been associated with a religious rite, pertaining to the union of couples based on reproduction purposes with a strong emphasis  in ethnic group survival.

In the United States, the LGBT movement faced this dilemma while lobbying for our rights and came out the possibility of civil unions for same-sex couples, without the name of “marriage”. Civil unions provides rights of those who adopt it, not without a discriminatory tinge, since it would create two types of citizens based on legal definition.

On Saturday June 25, was held in Valencia the first gay pride parade ever, numerically discrete in numbers,  but full of significance for being my hometown an extremely conservative city. Most disappointing was the coverage of the event by local newspaper El Carabobeño, in its online edition on 26 June, did not mention it was a gay pride march.

Today, as we celebrate in Venezuela journalist's day, i wonder at what point the editorial line of a newspaper must be independent of the guidelines of power? In journalism school i was  taught my functions would be: to inform, to educate and to persuade. I find it abominable that other uneventful news prevailed upon the need to inform over the dignity of an important group of constituents.

I can only keep fighting for the rights of all my fellow homosexuals without distinction and against hidden agendas aiming to take away the trascendence of a movement which basically seeks to dignify our existance as "human beings".

Failed Promises

At a year and a half to the presidential elections in Venezuela, both ruling and opposition parties have obviated any topic related to gay constituents. Topics such as: gay marriage, reproductive freedom legislation, adoption, among others; occupy the top priorities in the expectations of the venezuelan gay community, seeking for inclusion and equality in the country.

Double standards of lawmakers in Venezuela was shown this year with a new and "different" parliament, when they reversed an initiative to legalize civil unions. Instead they voted a bill draft on gender equality, a quote by Marelis Perez, venezuelan lawmaker "... establishes respect for those who have a sex choice to protect their human rights, call for non-discrimination, but does not give legitimacy to homosexual marriage, that is not the purpose of this law. "

So my question would be , what is the intention to brag about social inclusion? The inclusion speech fell short at times to fulfill Chavez's promises to the gay constituency, as a proof of his lack of commitment to universal human rights by a presumably analysis of a mere electoral calculation.

The Venezuelan political opposition has its share in the blame of the gay community reversal, with close ties to the church, their historical social conservative record and obviously the same fear of electoral calculation, places them as pasive observers of the abominable outrage against human rights in the country.

Dear concerned citizen, we have no other option but to keep fighting for the long-awaited demands of the gay community in Venezuela and having the fateful role of being second-class citizens being left in the past. We must demand all issues that affect us to be included in the political agendas of the "establishment".