Judge annuls Buenos Aires' first same-sex marriage
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Damain Bernath and Jorge Salazar Capon said they were not surprised that a second judge has ordered their marriage annulled and they vowed to continue the fight in court.
A judge has annulled the marriage between two men in Buenos Aires last week, which marked the second time a gay couple in Argentina had legally tied the knot. capital, EFE reported.
Judge Felix Igarzabal ordered the annulment after agreeing that the marriage between Damian Bernath, 39, and Jorge Salazar Capon, 43, marriage violated the Civil Code requirement that marriage be the result of consent of "man and wife," according to a judicial spokesmen.
The judge ordered the marriage suspended and the briefly married couple to return their marriage license, until the matter is ultimately settled in court, said Florencia Kravetz, who is representing the couple, according to the Buenos Aires newspaper La Nacion .
"My clients are not afraid of this attack. They knew that at some point something ridiculous like this would come," Kravetz said.
Bernath and Salazar achieved their goal of getting married last week thanks to the approval of a different judge, Elena Liberatori, an Buenos Aires administrative law judge.
"In our case, the marriage was the result of a quick process and hopefully other couples will have the same experience," Salazar had said in a press conference after the civil ceremony.
The Archdiocese of Argentina's capital and Catholic lawyers had asked the city government to appeal the ruling by Judge Liberatori allowing the marriage, but city authorities declined.
The first gay marriage in Argentina went through similar legal wrangling after administrative Judge Gabriela Seijas gave the green light to the marriage between Alex Freyre and José Maria Di Bello only to be reversed by Judge Alsina Marta Gomez, a judge with a different civil jurisdiction.
Di Bello and Freyre succeeded in marrying on Dec. 28 in Ushuaia, capital of the Argentinian province of Tierra del Fuego, as the result of an executive decree that has also been the subject of an annulment application filed by a group of Catholic lawyers. That was the first gay marriage ever in Latin America, and was endorsed by the National Institute to Combat Racism and Xenophobia, whose director, Claudio Morgado, was one of the witnesses at the historic ceremony.
More than 60 gay couples have filed petitions to marry in Argentina, where civil unions are available in four cities to couples of the same sex.
