After the first celebrations yesterday, June 16, 2008, which inaugurated the new gay marriage law in California, many thousands more gay and lesbian couples are expected to marry across the state between today and tomorrow.
From the first chronicles of civil functions, touching stories are emerging, such as, for example, that of Two women from San Francisco who got married yesterday were able to celebrate their fiftieth anniversary.. The event was also truly important for social and political reasons: California has the most structured and organized LGBT community in the world.
This fact, besides making us feel immense happiness for Californian gays and lesbians, leads us to strengthen even more and give a further impetus to our fight for the recognition of equal rights and duties for homosexual couples in Italy.
Today we officially launch the campaign for the establishment of the first "Self-managed Registry" of gay and lesbian marriages which will be inaugurated on 18-19 October with the celebration, simultaneously in at least 80 cities, of gay marriage.
Arcigay will bring to light the existence of homosexual couples that no statistical institute has ever attempted to record, also excluding them from the Census response grids.
Alone and alone We take on the responsibility of doing what Italian politics has, for now, denied us.
Couples who get married will commit to do the following: promoters of social and cultural action, both nationally and locally, in order to open a discussion and broaden knowledge about our lives, relationships, duties and rights and those denied.
Aurelio Mancuso
national president of Arcigay