A lesbian couple has filed suit in Puerto Rico demanding recognition of their Massachusetts marriage, the Washington Blade reports:
“We wish to enjoy the same social privileges and contractual rights that are conferred by the commonwealth on individuals in opposite-sex marriages and not to be treated as we are being treated as second class citizens differentiated, alienated and discriminated in comparison to other U.S. citizens,” say Ada Conde Vidal and Ivonne Álvarez Velez in their lawsuit they filed in U.S. District Court of Puerto Rico in San Juan. “Puerto Rico law precluding recognition of lawful same-sex marriages denies us those rights in violation of the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.”
Conde and Álvarez, who have been together for nearly 14 years, exchanged vows in Massachusetts in 2004 shortly after the state's same-sex marriage law took effect.
Puerto Rican lawmakers in 1999 amended the U.S. commonwealth's civil code to ban recognition of same-sex marriages – even those legally performed in other jurisdictions. Unions in which one person is transgender are also not recognized.
More at the Blade…
Wrote activist Pedro Julio Serrano on Facebook of the above photo:
They made history by being the first Puerto Rican couple of the same sex to marry in Massachusetts – the first State to legalize this right – a decade ago. They made history today by filing the first federal lawsuit so in Puerto Rico recognizes marriage between same-sex acts in other jurisdictions. They will make history when it declares legal the right to equal marriage in Puerto Rico. Thank you, yesterday, today and always… ADA and Ivonne!
