The mentality behind last weekend’s pro-life and anti-same sex marriage march in Guadalajara represents a “backward” step for human and women’s rights in Mexico, a leading activist said.
More than 10,000 people, dressed in white, turned out for the march from the Minerva traffic circle to the city center Sunday. The protest was endorsed by local Catholic leaders, including Cardinal Jose Robles, the archbishop of Guadalajara.
“Why aren’t they indignant about the violence, the murders, the disappearances, the clandestine graves?” said Guadalupe Ramos, coordinator of the Jalisco branch of the Comité de América Latina y el Caribe para la Defensa de los Derechos de la Mujer (CLADEM). “What makes them indignant is that a woman loves another woman, a man loves another man, and that women have the right to decide over their own bodies.”
By using “hate speech” in their discourse against gender equality, the aim of the movement is to “generate fear and distort the truth about the advances achieved by the feminist movement and gay community in recent decades,” Ramos said. Their position is the exact opposite of being “in favor” of life, women or children, she argued.
“They say they are in favor of freedoms, but in reality what they want to do is to diminish them,” Ramos said.
Ramos acknowledged that the conservative protestors have the right to freedom of speech, but warned that their “hateful discourse” could lead to violence and that is not acceptable.