#CondemnedForKissing: "They want us invisible and silent."

By Mariana Leder Kremer. They want us invisible and silent. The justice system, the media, this whole system that teeters a little more each day in the face of some of our most revolutionary acts: our kisses and our love. So the system, threatened, begins to tighten its grip, until it reaches…

June 28, 2019

By Mariana Leder Kremer

They want us invisible and silent. The justice system, the media, this whole system that teeters a little more each day in the face of some of our most revolutionary acts: our kisses and our love. So the system, threatened, begins to tighten its grip, until it reaches the point of sentencing Mariana Gómez to a one-year suspended prison sentence for kissing her wife, Rocío Girat, at Constitución station in October 2017.

They want us invisible and silent. And today, June 28th, 50 years after the Stonewall uprising, they intend to continue silencing us. The justice system and the media—the list is long, you know: Clarín, Infobae, La Nación—they all narrate it the same way, they talk about "his girlfriend," "the girlfriend of." No, friends, Mariana and Rocío are wives. Or are they going to ask them for the certificate again, like the police did 20 months ago at the station?

[READ ALSO: #ConvictedForKissing Mariana Gómez was found guilty, 1 year of suspended prison sentence]

They intend to continue violating us. Out-of-touch colleagues, guys with their cameras, devoid of any humanity in their professional careers: looking for that one shot, the one of Mariana passed out on the ground as she left the courthouse. We had to ask them to stop snapping. "Men back," I heard a colleague say. And yes, they should keep that in mind more often, because it's time for men to back down, and it's time to fire these miserable photographers who arrive at this stage of a story and ask, "Who is Mariana?" so they know who to photograph. Do your job properly, and if you're going to do it badly anyway, at least don't perpetuate the violence we've been protesting against.

And the struggle, the struggle continues, as always, and as Rocío, Mariana's wife, said towards the end:

We will not stop, we will continue to demand Marian's acquittal and the removal of Marta Yungano, the lesbian-hating judge who issued the ruling today.

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