Down Mexico Way

As long-established newsrooms continue to shrink and thus are able to cover fewer stories, one things that is always covered these days is when even the government of a city – it doesn't have to be a state or country – makes a move in favor of marriage neutering. Mexico City made the latest headlines. The mayor still has to sign the legislation for it to be officially adopted. Tracy Wilkinson covers the story for the Los Angeles Times.

Mexico City's initiative goes further than any other in Latin America by rewriting the law to redefine marriage as a "free union between two people," not only between a man and a woman. It gives homosexual couples the same rights as heterosexual pairs, including the right to adopt, inherit, obtain joint housing loans and share insurance policies.

Why just two people?

Mexico City, as a rule, is less conservative than much of the rest of the country, relatively open to sexual freedoms and expressions.

Is sexual activity outside of marriage illegal in Mexico City? If not, then these changes to the law were not necessary to protect those freedoms.

Under Ebrard and his Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD, which controls the legislature, Mexico City has been at the forefront of social policy, often taking stances a far distance from other parts of the country.

The "forefront"? Why is it the forefront, and not, say, the extreme?

Before Monday's vote, Mexico City already had on the books a law that allowed a kind of legal union between unmarried people, under which they could avail themselves of a limited number of services and benefits. Only 680 couples have done so since the law took effect in 2007.

Pry away all of the noise, and the fact remains that all of society is being told it has to reorder itself for the sake of massaging the feelings of a tiny few. It is bad public policy.