Mexico’s ruling party clobbered in elections following push for gay ‘marriage’
Mexico’s Institutional Revolutionary Party
(PRI) has just lost its 86-year dominance of Mexico’s state governments in a
massive electoral upset following a new initiative by Mexican president and PRI
member Enrique Peña Nieto to amend the constitution to create homosexual
“marriage.”
For the first time since the PRI was created
in 1929, the party no longer holds a majority of state governorships. Out of 17
states holding elections on June 5, the PRI won only five states and lost four
states with 19% of the country’s population. The result is that the PRI now
holds the governorship in only 15 of the country’s 31 states, with 45% of
Mexico’s population. The party is also out of power in the nation’s Federal
District.
The
president’s initiative, announced on May 17, includes a massive
propaganda campaign to
convince public school students and the population in general that
homosexuality and transgenderism are normal and morally acceptable, as well as
membership in the United Nations’ “LGBT Core Group,” a coalition of nations
promoting the homosexual agenda worldwide.
Peña Nieto’s new pro-gay offensive was met
with condemnation by the leadership
of the Catholic Church in Mexico as
well as the creation of the National
Front for the Family, a coalition of over a thousand
organizations united to defeat the initiative and to protect the traditional
definition of marriage. The National Front for the Family held protests
throughout the country on June 1 and 2, and PRI electedofficials
began to abandon the president, stating
their opposition to the initiative and promising their constituents they would
vote against it.
The cause of the PRI’s defeat cited most often
in the Mexican media was the president’s homosexual “marriage” initiative.
Although it remains to be proved that the PRI’s massive electoral loss was due
to the unpopularity of the proposed constitutional amendment, polls indicate
that Mexicans are both dissatisfied with Peña Nieto’s presidency and opposed to
homosexual “marriage.”
“Peña Nieto and the PRI have paid the price at
the ballot box for presenting initiatives against Mexican values,” said Luis
Losada Pescador, who leads the activist organization CitizenGO as part of the
coalition of the National Front for the Family. “It may be that Peña Nieto is
trying to win foreign friends, but he has reaped internal rejection,” he added.
The Bishop of Veracruz, Felipe Gallardo Martín
del Campo, noted of the electoral results that “normal Mexicans, who are 99
percent [of the population], don’t accept marriage between people of the same
sex and the proof of this are the protests that have been held throughout the
country.” He added that other parties “should work harder and not commit the
same errors because they know that in the next election the people are not
going to vote for their party.”
Recent polls show that Mexicans continue to
oppose the creation of homosexual “marriage,” with percentages against it
ranging from 44% to 62% over the last three years, and percentages from 36% to
52% in favor. A majority of Mexicans continue to oppose the legalized killing
of the unborn in most cases as well.
Reserving
marriage to a man and a woman is not discriminatory. This
was confirmed by a ruling of the European Court of Human Rights
(ECtHR) published yesterday. In the case Chapin and Charpentier v. France (known in
France as the "mariage de
Bègles") the Court unanimously found
that Article 12 (right to marry), taken together with Article 14
(prohibition of discrimination), and Article 8 (right to respect for private
and family life), taken together with Article 14, were not violated. This
means that the French State, preventing two men from marrying (at a moment
where the law did not provide this possibility), did not violate the
European Convention for Human Rights.
As explained by the Registrar of the Court,
"In May 2004 Mr Chapin and Mr Charpentier submitted a marriage application
to the civil registry department of Bègles municipal council. The
municipal civil registrar published the banns of marriage. The public
prosecutor at the Bordeaux tribunal de grande instance served notice
of his objection to the marriage on the Bègles municipal civil registrar
and on Mr Chapin and Mr Charpentier. Despite the objection, the mayor
of Bègles performed the marriage ceremony and made an entry to that effect
in the register of births, marriages and deaths". Having
been dismissed at every stage of the French judicial system, the
plaintiffs appealed to the ECtHR, contending "that they had been discriminated
against on the basis of their sexual orientation".
Yesterday the
ECtHR confirmed the decision of the French Supreme Court
(Cour de Cassation), affirming that there is no discrimination if the
State denies the right to marry to two adults of the same
sex. "This is good news, as it shows that the competence of the
States that have ratified the European Convention on Human
Rights must be respected on matters related to family and marriage"
says Antoine Renard, President of FAFCE, the European Federation of Catholic
Family Associations. "We welcome the fact that this time the
Convention has not been the object of a subjective interpretation and
encourage all National and International institutions to take this decision
into account: marriage, i.e. the union between a woman and a man in view of
founding a family, is a unique institution that must be
protected".
This
decision comes at a historical moment as some European
countries are denaturing the institution of marriage, in many
cases under strong international pressure which is not justified by
any treaty or agreement. At the same time other countries enshrine
the definition of marriage in their Constitutions as the union of a woman
and a man. A European Citizens' Initiative, called Mum, Dad & Kids, has also started
within the European Union in order to preserve the independence of Member
States in the field of family law.
Reprinted
with permission from FAFCE.
