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Ten years ago, when I registered my daughter's birth and legal parentage, her other mother and I began a new battle: to formalize it in the civil registry. Initially, we started like any other family with another child, but with a newborn having two mothers, it wouldn't be easy. Months after the equal marriage law (26.618) was passed, and after we had married her other mother, we were struck by the sting of inequality and forced to act. It was that or the erasure of our individual identities.

At that time, we went to three civil registries in the city to obtain the ID card, despite the legislation in force at the time. Every time we went to get her ID, something happened: a phone rang, voices whispered, the employees made confused movements, and in every single case, the absorbed faces of those who work daily processing this paperwork.  

That reality I experienced ten years ago culminated in an unprecedented resolution (038/12). However, today it is repeating itself for those who, in the anonymity of dissent, cannot be heard.

Luciana Bustamante of Xadres Familias Sin Moldes (Adults of Families Without Molds) states, “We receive many inquiries from non-hegemonic families with conflicts regarding legal records, such as co-maternity, recognition of parentage without respecting gender identity, and disputes over visitation rights after separations. There is a great deal of misinformation among lawyers, healthcare professionals, and in the educational field regarding the fulfillment of rights, and a large percentage of families end up taking legal action, with the situation being worsened by mistreatment from public officials.”

Hidden inequality

There are "hidden" acts of inequality that are revealed through certain specific situations.

Registering our daughter's identity with both mothers' surnames, as stipulated by Article 37 of the equal marriage law, brought this discriminatory act—the non-recognition of our lesbian-mother family—into sharp focus. And so we were forced to file an appeal for protection of constitutional rights.

The fury we felt at such injustice simultaneously gave us courage and fueled our frustration, compelling us to resolve the matter through the courts. On that occasion, nine years ago, the ruling we achieved was crucial for same-sex couples, not only in terms of recognizing our families and children like everyone else, but also because it no longer requires us to marry to have children (Articles 2 and 4), a historic victory.

“The child’s identity is being violated”

Despite all this, today, faced with the astonishing repetition of such situations, inequalities persist for families experiencing the same difficulties. Take the case of Ana Clara Jandet and Noelia Escarate from the province of Mendoza. Twenty days after their daughter's birth, when they tried to register her at the civil registry in Godoy Cruz, they were prevented from doing so because Ana was "not married to Noelia" (the birth mother). This forced them to seek private legal counsel, after first going to the family court where they received no response. "Having to pay a lawyer for a right is inexplicable," Ana stated, adding that they were also required to have all the paperwork notarized.

According to Andre Rivas, president of AFDA Diverse Families , “The fact that registrations continue to be obstructed not only violates people's parental rights but also the child's identity. From a legal standpoint, it is a denial of access to rights. This is unthinkable for a heterosexual couple. In the consultations we receive, most require some intervention, for example, from a lawyer who has to explain the regulations to the officials so that they are followed.”

The binary and heteronormative system is constantly mutating and creating new forms of domination. It also frequently happens that our dissenting voices are appropriated by those who claim to sympathize with our suffering. In this way, they continue to displace us, now under the guise of empathetic kindness. They "include" us, but when we raise our usurped voices, they cast us out of the realm of those who can, and always have been able to, silence us once again. We see this constantly in academia, for example, with "earthly" psychoanalysts who describe dissident sexualities with animal metaphors or other harmful comparisons.

In the everyday events that make us citizens, we continue to notice a disguised indolence, which often comes across as indifferent and dismissive towards those acts that occur constantly and that no one notices, but which reinforce once again the untransferable experience of the erasure of an identity.