Jose Maria Di Bello and his partner Alex Freyre won the right to get married when a judge ruled last week that a ban on gay marriage violates Argentina’s constitution.

“On December 1st we will become man and man,” said Di Bello, welling up in tears as a city clerk gave him the paperwork.

Buenos Aires Mayor Mauricio Macri said the city will not appeal – in effect inviting other same-sex couples to pursue their rights in court as well.

“We have to live with and accept this reality: the world is moving in this direction,” Macri said Friday, adding that it is important officials “safeguard the right of each person to freely choose with whom they want to form a couple and be happy.”

Freyre, 39, executive director of the Buenos Aires AIDS Foundation, and Di Bello, 41, an executive with the Argentine Red Cross, sued after being denied a license in April.

Their request was granted by Judge Gabriela Seijas, who said laws limiting marriage to “a man and a woman” violate constitutional rights of equality.

Argentina’s Congress is considering changing dozens of articles in the civil code to enable same-sex marriage. The proposal has support among ruling party lawmakers but President Cristina Fernandez has yet to take a stand. The Roman Catholic Church and other Christian groups are opposed.

Currently no country in Latin America allows gay marriage, though some jurisdictions allow gay partners to form civil unions with many of the same rights.

Seijas’ ruling sets no precedent beyond this case, but other gays and lesbians can cite it and hope for positive results in court if their requests for marriage licenses are denied.

“Ideally we want the bill to pass so that couples won’t have to resort to this type of action,” said Maria Rachid, president of the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transsexual Federation of Argentina.

Buenos Aires in 2002 became the first city in Latin America to allow same-sex civil unions, and Mexico City followed in 2007. Uruguay has legalized civil unions nationwide. In the Spanish-speaking world, Spain went further, legalizing same-sex marriage in 2005.

The men – both HIV positive – plan to marry on World AIDS Day at the same civil registry in the capital’s Palermo neighborhood. They told The Associated Press that marriage – and not just a civil union – is important to them because they want a shared health insurance policy and inheritance rights, among other things married couples now enjoy.

Though it looked likely, it was still nice to see the official announcement that the “everything but marriage” ballot initiative passed in Washington State. Now, I know that Washington is a much more liberal state than Maine and equating the two would be a mistake. But I wonder, how much the removal of the word marriage assisted in the ballot victory?

Not that I believe marriage without the term is sufficient. It’s not. Legal distinctions between groups based on personal characteristics like sexual orientation matter even if the distinctions don’t result in a concrete rights disadvantage for one group. But, if we could create a national situation where civil union-like status existed for all same-sex couples, we’d be in a pretty good place to start a Supreme Court legal challenge.

Once the relationships are the same, there would be a good equal protection argument in favor of adding the word marriage to both kinds of relationships.

That’s how it happened in Canada: fight for civil unions first, get marriage second.

Washington might just have proven how sound that strategy is.

“The President has long opposed divisive and discriminatory efforts to deny rights and benefits to same-sex couples, and as he said at the Human Rights Campaign dinner, he believes ‘strongly in stopping laws designed to take rights away.’ Also at the dinner, he said he supports, ‘ensuring that committed gay couples have the same rights and responsibilities afforded to any married couple in this country.’”

So it seems – though he doesn’t quite say it – that the President supports retaining marriage in Maine and domestic partnership rights in Washington.

But if he really believes this, than the statement should have tried to persuade voters that they should vote “No on 1″ in Maine, or for Referendum 71 in Washington, or even for the Kalamazoo, Mich. gay rights ordinance.

We all know the president can be clear and forceful and eloquent when he wants to. We also know that his great gift is the power to persuade. He had a chance here to actually do something on our behalf, but didn’t take it.

365ers, what do you think: Is his statement enough? Will it help in Maine and Washington?

Over the past year, support for civil unions has grown significantly among those who oppose same-sex marriage while remaining stable among those who favor same-sex marriage. At the same time, opponents of same-sex marriage continue to outnumber supporters overall. Conducted Aug. 11-27 among 4,013 adults, the poll finds that 53% oppose allowing gays and lesbians to marry legally, compared with 39% who support same-sex marriage, numbers that are virtually unchanged over the past year.

Supporters of same-sex marriage are divided over the best way to pursue its legalization; 45% favor pushing hard to legalize it as soon as possible, while 42% of same-sex marriage advocates say they should not push too hard to legalize same-sex marriages right away because this might risk creating a backlash against gays and lesbians.

The poll also finds that half of the public (49%) says homosexual behavior is morally wrong, while 9% say it is morally acceptable and 35% say it is not a moral issue. Those who say it is morally wrong are significantly less supportive of same-sex marriage and civil unions.

The report, including an executive summary, methodology and topline questionnaire, is available online. Additional results from the survey will be released in subsequent reports.

This survey is a joint effort of the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life and the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. Both are projects of the Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan “fact tank” that provides information on the issues, attitudes and trends shaping America and the world.

On Sept. 15, U.S. Reps. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., and Jared Polis, D-Colo., introduced the Respect for Marriage Act, which would repeal the so-called Defense of Marriage Act.

I say “so-called” — and I’m not alone — because the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act does not defend marriage, does not provide anything to encourage people to marry or stay married or improve marriages.

And I don’t think DOMA was passed with the intention of defending marriage any more than literary tests were enacted to preserve the integrity of the election process.

DOMA was enacted to maintain legal discrimination of gays and lesbians; to perpetuate the prejudicial notion that gay and lesbian relationships are lesser than straight unions, illegitimate, improper, wrong; and, sickly, if you’ll recall the time, to play partisan games.

We have lived with DOMA for 13 years, and we have seen DOMA cited in multiple ways to deny — not defend — marriage rights. Because of DOMA, legally married same-sex couples in the United States are denied many benefits extended to opposite-sex married couples, some of them small, some significant:

• Social Security survivor benefits are not awarded to the same-sex partner of a deceased spouse.

• Federal COBRA health insurance benefits are not extended to the partner of a policyholder.

•  Married gays are penalized in taxes due to DOMA and not guaranteed unpaid leave to care for a sick spouse.

And the list goes on to include about 1,000 bullet points.

So last week, two of our openly gay members of the U.S. House joined Nadler to introduce the Respect for Marriage Act, which, on the day of its introduction, already had 91 co-sponsors.

Nadler was among the 67 members of the House who voted against DOMA in 1996. He knew then the harm it posed, but, he said last week, that injury was not apparent to all members because in 1996 no state allowed for gays to marry.

“This made it easy for our opponents to demonize gay and lesbian families,” Nadler said. “Now, in 2009, we have tens of thousands of married same-sex couples in this country, living openly, raising families and paying taxes in states that have granted them the right to marry, and it has become abundantly clear that, while the sky has not fallen on the institution of marriage, as DOMA supporters had claimed, DOMA is causing these couples concrete and lasting harm. Discrimination against committed couples and stable families is terrible federal policy. But, with a president who is committed to repealing DOMA and a broad, diverse coalition of Americans on our side, we now have a real opportunity to remove from the books this obnoxious and ugly law.”

Neither Baldwin nor Polis were serving in Congress when the obnoxious and ugly law was passed. But some prominent politicians who held office at the time have endorsed the Respect for Marriage Act, and their support proves how far America has come on the issue of same-sex marriage since the hypothetical yesterdays of 1996.

To gays and lesbians saying, “I do,” former US. Rep. Bob Barr, R-Ga., said, “I wish I didn’t.”

Barr wrote DOMA. In 1996, GLBT newspaper reports usually referred to him as the “anti-gay Georgia congressman” and GLBT newspaper columnists usually referred to him as the “virulently anti-gay Georgia congressman.”

Barr no longer believes in DOMA. “This legislation would strengthen the principle that each state is free to set the definition of marriage the citizens of that state have adopted,” he said.

Former President Bill Clinton, who signed DOMA into law, issued a statement last week: “When the Defense of Marriage Act was passed, gay couples could not marry anywhere in the United States or the world for that matter. Thirteen years later, the fabric of our country has changed, and so should this policy.”

And U.S. Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., offered a most candid statement reversing his position on DOMA: “On July 12, 1996, I cast the worst vote of my political career. Having served in public office since 1973, that says something. While I’ve made other mistakes, this was different: It was a deliberate vote that I knew to be poor public policy and was against my values.”

Blumenauer thought passage of DOMA would mellow the right-wingers. “Far from stopping it, this vote fed the bigotry,” he wrote in an op-ed piece for HuffingtonPost.com.

And the right-wingers feasted for years.

Now, can we say the banquet is over?

The Respect of Marriage Act would not legalize same-sex marriage across the United States, though some loud mouths on cable news programs and talk radio have a segment of America believing that’s the intent of the bill.

Rather, the Respect for Marriage Act would repeal DOMA and, by adopting the place-of-celebration rule recommended in the Uniform Marriage and Divorce Act, embrace the common law principle that marriages that are valid in the state where they were entered into will be recognized, according to Nadler’s office. Marriage recognition under state law would continue to be decided state by state.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T, take care, TCB.

About 27 percent of the estimated 564,743 total gay couples in the United States said they were in a relationship akin to “husband” and “wife,” according to the Census Bureau tally provided to The Associated Press. That’s compared with 91 percent of the 61.3 million total opposite-sex couples who reported being married.

A consultant to the Census Bureau estimated there were roughly 100,000 official same-sex weddings, civil unions and domestic partnerships in 2008.

Analysts said the disparities are probably a reflection of same-sex couples in committed relationships who would get married if they could in their states. The numbers are also an indicator of the count to come in the 2010 census, a tally that could stir a state-by-state fight over same-sex marriage, gay adoption and other legal rights.

Nationwide, about 56 percent of the 149,956 total same-sex marriages in the census survey last year were lesbian couples. Same-sex spouses were reported in every state; specific breakdowns weren’t immediately available.

“Even though in 2008 there were only a few states where you could get legally married, a large portion of same-sex couples either were married or chose to use that term,” said Gary Gates, a demographer at UCLA who is advising the Census Bureau.

Gates reviewed the number of marriage licenses issued and other factors to estimate the number of same-sex couples in legal relationships. During 2008, same-sex marriage was legal in California, Massachusetts, Iowa and Connecticut, while a handful of other states recognized civil unions and domestic partnerships. U.S. same-sex couples also can marry in Canada and other foreign countries.

Curtis Chin, 41, and Jeff Kim, 43, of Los Angeles, are among those who plan to report to the census that they are spouses. The two were planning a big wedding for 2009 but rushed into a private legal ceremony last fall when it became clear that California voters would soon ban same-sex marriages. Chin says he and Kim won’t feel like they are really married until they do a follow-up ceremony in front of family and friends but believe it’s important to get a full count.

“Gay couples are getting married or in committed relationships, and we are out here,” he said.

The numbers come as the Census Bureau prepares to make an official count of same-sex marriages, unions and partnerships for the first time in the 2010 head count, following the Obama administration’s decision to provide the numbers under pressure from gay-rights groups.

The figures provided to the AP also included higher, previously unreleased numbers for the three previous years.

In 2007, 341,000 out of 753,618 total same-sex couples reported being in a marriage relationship, even though only about 11,000 marriage licenses had been issued in the country. The numbers were even higher for 2005 and 2006; about 390,000 each year reported being in a same-sex marriage out of nearly 780,000 reported gay couples.

Martin O’Connell, the Census Bureau’s chief of the fertility and family statistics branch, attributed the higher numbers in previous years to a confusing survey layout and formatting errors. He said those problems were corrected for 2008.

U.S. District Judge Benjamin Settle in Tacoma granted the preliminary injunction involving petitions for Referendum 71 while a related case moves forward on the constitutionality of the state public records act.

The referendum, sponsored by a group called Protect Marriage Washington, asks voters to approve or reject the “everything but marriage” domestic partnership law that state lawmakers passed earlier this year.

In his ruling, Settle said he was “not persuaded that waiver of one’s fundamental right to anonymous political speech is a prerequisite for participation in Washington’s referendum process.”

Brian Zylstra, spokesman for Secretary of State Sam Reed, said that the judge’s decision “is a step away from open government.”

“When people sign a referendum or initiative petition, they are trying to change state law,” he said. “We believe that changing state law should be open to public view.”

A spokesman for the state attorney general’s office, which is representing Reed in the case, said they are weighing whether to appeal the preliminary injunction.

At a hearing before Settle last week, attorneys for Protect Marriage had argued that referendum signers’ names and addresses should be exempt from the public records disclosure law because release of the information would put them at risk of harassment, amounting to an unconstitutional infringement of free speech rights.

Referendum campaign organizer Larry Stickney said he’s already been subjected to threats and harassment for his involvement in the effort. The campaign also said it has heard from supporters who didn’t want to sign the petition for fear of reprisals.

However, Assistant Attorney General Jim Pharris told the judge that Protect Marriage hasn’t shown significant harm beyond rude comments or phone calls – nothing that would “be appropriate to overturning the state’s strong tradition for open government.”

In his ruling, Settle agreed with the state that there must be measures in place to prevent referendum fraud. But because of the secretary of state’s process of verifying signatures, “at this time the court is not persuaded that full public disclosure of referendum petitions is necessary,” the judge said.

Protect Marriage turned in nearly 138,000 signatures in July, with 121,780 being accepted. That was about 1,200 more than the minimum required to qualify for the ballot.

Two gay rights groups, WhoSigned.Org and KnowThyNeighbor.org, previously said they would post the names online, which sparked the legal action to keep them private.

Protect Marriage was unsuccessful in an effort to keep the names of its political donors secret when the state Public Disclosure Commission ruled last month that donors weren’t exempt from campaign finance laws requiring disclosure.

Protect Marriage Attorney Stephen Pidgeon said he was still deciding whether to appeal that decision. But in the meantime, he said that he is happy that the names of those who signed the referendum petitions will not be released.

“The court has said, and said rightly, that the ability to participate, even anonymously, in the political process is a long and respected right in the United States,” he said.

The legal battle to keep the referendum off the Nov. 3 ballot ended Wednesday when supporters of expanded rights for domestic partners said they wouldn’t appeal a Thurston County Superior Court judge’s refusal to block the vote.

Washington Families Standing Together chairwoman Anne Levinson said the group will now focus on a campaign to ensure the law is retained by voters.

After passage by the Legislature, the law was supposed to take effect July 26, but the referendum campaign put it on hold. Now, it will take effect only if approved by voters.

If the law is rejected at the polls, previously enacted legislation on domestic partnerships would remain in place.

More than 5,900 domestic partnership registrations have been filed in Washington since the first law took effect in July 2007.

Washington Families Standing Together chairwoman Anne Levinson said the group will now focus on a campaign to ensure the law is retained.

Referendum 71, sponsored by a conservative political group called Protect Marriage Washington, asks voters to approve or reject the “everything but marriage” domestic partnership law that state lawmakers passed earlier this year.

The new law would add more legal rights to the state’s established domestic partnerships for gay couples, putting registered partners on par with married couples under state law. Under current Washington law, if one partner is at least 62, unmarried heterosexual couples are also allowed to register as domestic partners.

An “accept” vote on R-71 would put the newest law into place, and a “reject” vote would block it. The underlying laws laying out domestic partnerships – enacted in 2007 and broadened once already in 2008 – would not be affected.

In a statement late Wednesday, Levinson said the group has to prepare for the election “without the distraction of an ongoing legal debate.” But she said it still disagrees with the Tuesday ruling of a Thurston County Superior Court judge who wouldn’t block the vote.

Judge Thomas McPhee rejected the group’s argument that Secretary of State Sam Reed improperly accepted thousands of petition signatures that supported putting R-71 on the ballot.

Levinson’s group had argued that signature-gatherers needed to sign declarations that, by law, were printed on the petitions professing that all the signatures were gathered properly. In some cases, the space on the back of the ballot for the signature-gatherer’s name was left blank or rubber-stamped with a sponsor’s signature.

The judge sided with the state, which has accepted petitions without signed declarations since 2006 under legal guidance from the state attorney general.

McPhee also rejected the argument that Reed improperly counted signatures from people who weren’t registered voters when they signed the petitions.

“But this fight isn’t about the interpretation of referenda statutes,” Levinson said. “Something far more important is at stake.”

Reed certified R-71 for the November ballot last week. Election officials revised the number of accepted signatures downward Tuesday, after an audit showed some signatures had been incorrectly accepted.

The latest official tally of accepted petition signatures for R-71 was 121,780 – about 1,200 more than the minimum required to qualify for the ballot.

Protect Washington attorney Stephen Pidgeon said he was happy the legal battle to the ballot had ended.

“We believe that even though this is an impassioned issue that civil discourse is possible, that the high road can be taken, and that ultimately Washington voters will make an intelligent and informed decision,” he said.

A separate federal lawsuit brought by R-71’s sponsors seeks to keep those signed referendum petitions secret.

The petitions are considered public records under state law, but R-71’s sponsors claim petition-signers could face harassment by political opponents if their names are released. U.S. District Judge Benjamin Settle is expected to rule in that case this week.

The domestic partnership expansion was supposed to take effect July 26, but the referendum campaign put it on hold. Now, the law will take effect only if approved by voters Nov. 3.

As of this week, more than 5,900 domestic partnerships have been filed with the state since the law took effect in 2007.

An appeal was considered likely, however, with just a few days remaining before officials need to begin printing materials for the Nov. 3 general election.

The case involves Referendum 71, which would put the Legislature’s latest expansion of domestic partnership rights for gay couples on the November ballot.

The measure, sponsored by a conservative political group called Protect Marriage Washington, would ask voters to approve or reject the “everything but marriage” domestic partnership law that state lawmakers passed earlier this year.

The lawsuit seeking to halt the vote was filed by Washington Families Standing Together, a gay-rights group. It claims Secretary of State Sam Reed improperly accepted thousands of petition signatures that supported putting R-71 on the ballot.

Thurston County Superior Court Judge Thomas McPhee rejected those arguments.

The new law would add more legal rights to the state’s established domestic partnerships for gay couples, putting registered partners on par with married couples under state law. Unmarried heterosexual couples also could register as domestic partners.

A “yes” vote on R-71 would put the newest law into place, and a “no” vote would reject it. The underlying laws laying out domestic partnerships – enacted in 2007 and broadened once already in 2008 – would not be affected.

Washington Families Standing Together’s previous attempt to block R-71 was turned away last week in King County for technical reasons. But King County Superior Court Judge Julie Spector said she was concerned Reed may have accepted tens of thousands of invalid signatures.

Reed certified R-71 for the November ballot last week. Election officials revised the number of accepted signatures downward Tuesday, after an audit showed some signatures had been incorrectly accepted.

The latest official tally of accepted petition signatures for R-71 was 121,780 – about 1,200 more than the minimum required to qualify for the ballot.

A separate federal lawsuit brought by R-71’s sponsors is seeking to keep those signed referendum petitions secret.

The petitions are considered public records under state law, but R-71’s sponsors claim they could face harassment by political opponents if the names of petition-signers are released. U.S. District Judge Benjamin Settle is expected to rule in that case this week.

The domestic partnership expansion was supposed to take effect on July 26, but the referendum campaign put it on hold. If the referendum does appear on the ballot, the law would take effect only if approved by voters Nov. 3.

As of this week, more than 5,900 domestic partnerships have been filed with the state since the law took effect in 2007.

The “everything but marriage” measure broadens recognition of domestic partnerships by granting gay and lesbian couples all the remaining state-provided benefits presently extended only to married heterosexual couples.

After a month of counting petition signatures, the secretary of state’s office said that Referendum 71 had 121,486 valid signatures – nearly a thousand more than needed to advance to the general election.

But supporters of the expansion of the law asked a King County Superior Court judge on Monday to at least temporarily block the referendum from the ballot, arguing that election officials have accepted thousands of invalid petition signatures.

The new law was supposed to take effect on July 26. But the referendum campaign put it on hold, and the law can now only take effect if approved by state voters Nov. 3.

It would expand the domestic partnership law passed in 2007 that granted gay couples hospital visitation rights, the ability to authorize autopsies and organ donations, and inheritance rights when there is no will.

Lawmakers expanded that law again in 2008 to give gay domestic partners standing under laws covering probate and trusts, community property and guardianship.

The new benefits under the current measure for gay couples range from adoption and child support rights to public employment benefits – although any benefits that cost the state money, such as pensions, are delayed until 2014 because of the state’s recession-fueled budget problems.

If the referendum leads to a rejection of the law’s expansion, legislation approved in 2007 and 2008 would be retained, but it would roll back the additional rights granted in the “everything but marriage” bill.

As of this week, more than 5,800 domestic partnership registrations had been filed in Washington since the first law took effect in July 2007.