To D.C. With Love: From one District to Another....

that was going to be my original title to this blog when I decided to move to Mexico City in the second leg of my "South of the Reimagined Border" tour.  It was such a natural decision to pick Mexico City as my temporary home after falling in love with D.C..

1.  They both started out as swamps/waterways. 

2.  They both have been known as murder capitals at some point in their history

3.  Both share similar structures of government, Mexico City (Distrito Federal) is also a federal district like Washington, DC.   Except unlike D.F., D.C. has no representation in Congress and laws that are passed by the city council must go through a federal government committee for final passage. 

Mas y Mas y Mas

Because of that structure its kind of a political miracle that the gays in D.C. celebrated this week the right to have our unions recognized as marriage if we want.  And it's a political miracle that D.F. celebrated the same victory this week in a country with a non-secular catholic stronghold. 

For folks who know me, my views on marriage are pretty caustic. I think the institution is kind of a joke because it falsely assumes that love is the primary motivation when in reality the history of marriage has everything to do with economics. It entitles people to certain rights that are denied to others who don't want to, or not ready to, or can't marry.  It denies other familial structural unions that are not seen as the husband/wife union norm. The whole thing kind of sucks to me.  And I hate how lesbian and gay organizations put so many resources into this fight when there are alot more other issues our community is facing that is killing us daily.

With all of that said, I'm happy that my d.c. and d.f. peeps have an option. I mean at the end of the day stuff like this helps people realize that we're not going through a phase. That we are the norm.  That they can't eradicate us from the face of the earth. 

But I hope these victories do not mean that gay people are marching towards the path of heteronormativity.  That this means we're going to form structures that are husband/husband...wife/wife....2 adultides with 2 1/2 childites.  When I started realizing i was a macha,   I fell in love with being 'the damn homo' because i saw that instead of crawling into holes,  us gays have created spaces to find each other outside of just being sexually compatible.  That family looks so different to a lot of us (including me) because we were kicked out of our traditional family structures.  And at the end of the day, we said fuck this.  We're just going to be fabulous.