First same-sex 'divorce' registered in Mexico

Mar 1, 2011 / 13:35 pm

The first “divorce” between a lesbian couple has been registered in the Mexican city of Piedras Negras, located on the Mexico-Texas border.

The divorce between Maria Marcela Orozco, 38, and Sandra Elvira Nava Jimenez, 45, was the first of its kind in Mexico, reported the newspaper Milenio. The Mexican State of Coahuila, in which Piedras Negras is located, legalized civil unions for same-sex couples in January 2007.

The pair divorced over accusations of infidelity and financial mismanagement. 

President of the Mexican Institute on Sexual Orientation, Oscar Rivas Lozano, explained to CNA Feb. 28 that according to the organization’s statistics, “Homosexual unions tend not to last as long as heterosexual ones.”

One of the reasons for the high rate of break-ups among same-sex couples is that “infidelity is three times higher than among heterosexual couples,” Rivas Lozano said.

Fidelity has a different meaning for homosexual couples, he continued, as “they make a distinction between emotional and sexual fidelity, and they say, in some cases sexual fidelity is not considered important, whereas emotional fidelity is.”

For this reason, the institute holds that the institution of marriage cannot be applied to same-sex unions because “the vows of marriage themselves speak of fidelity, mutual help, procreation. And in the case of homosexual couples, this is different,” he said.

“Homosexual couples tend to stay together between three and six years, at the most,” Rivas Lozano said, adding that “female couples almost always stay together longest.”

Compared with heterosexual marriages, the difference is abysmal, as “according to the Civil Registry in Mexico, traditional marriages in the country last an average of 10 to 15 years.”

Among lesbian couples, “relationships are always very delicate because they are very passionate, and sometimes too much emotion is involved,” he continued. 

“From the anthropological point of view, it is understandable because the male-female relationship tends to balance itself out psychologically, as women tend to be more intuitive and emotional, and men more reflective and rational,” Rivas Lozano said.

Juan Dabdoub of the Mexican organization Familia Mundial, located in Monterrey, told CNA he was not surprised to learn of the first lesbian divorce in Mexico. He noted that statistics show that those attracted to members of the same sex “have very high levels of instability in their emotional relations.”

Dabdoub said that in Spain it has been shown that homosexual men have an average of 39 partners throughout their lives. “What our homosexual brothers need is help, not encouragement; otherwise sooner or later they will suffer more intensely the effects of not receiving adequate reparative therapy in time.”

In Mexico, same-sex “marriage” is legal only in Mexico City, where the Supreme Court ruled it constitutional and granted couples the right to adopt children.

The Catholic Church, as well as other Christian denominations, harshly criticized the ruling, which was praised by Mexico City Mayor Macelo Ebrard, a possible contender in the country’s next presidential elections.

The Archdiocese of Mexico City called it “morally unacceptable” to make same-sex unions equal to marriage.

Catholic teaching does not support gay “marriage” because it is an attack on the nature, meaning and purpose of authentic marriage, comprised of a union between one man and one woman.

The Vatican and bishops around the world have denounced laws that aim to present “alternative models” of family and conjugal life as an attack on the basic cell of society.