Thousands protest against same-sex marriage in Mexico

Mexico: Hundreds of thousands of people have marched through Mexico City on Saturday to protest against President Enrique Pena Nieto's push to legalise same-sex marriage in the country. Organisers of the protest, the ''National Front for the Family'' estimated that at least 215,000 people participated in the march, making it one of the largest protest marches in Mexico in recent years.

The marchers dressed mainly in white and carrying white balloons, held banners warning against same-sex marriage and demanding parents' right to control sex education in schools.

 

One of the demonstrators, Abraham Ledesma, an evangelical pastor who traveled from the border city of Reynosa, across the border from McAllen, Texas, to take part in the march said;

"We are not against anybody's (sexual) identity,'' 

"What we are against is the government imposition ... of trying to impose gender ideology in education. As religious leaders, we don't want to be forced to marry same-sex couples and call it marriage.''

Other protesters carried signs reading "an adopted child deserves a mother and a father."

A tiny crowd of same-sex marriage supporters on the other side of a police barricade separating the two sides at Mexico's Independence Monument, listened to music and speeches.

One of the members of the tiny crowd, Felipe Quiroz, a gay activist and school teacher said;

"They may be the majority," "But just because they are the majority, doesn't mean they can take rights away from minorities. That would lead us to a dark period, to fundamentalism"

Many view the massive march as the Roman Catholic church flexing its political power in a country where about 80 per cent of people identify as nominally Catholic.

Mexican president Pena Nieto, in May proposed legalising same-sex marriage nationwide.

Currently, same sex marriage is legal only in some places such as Mexico City, the northern state of Coahuila and Quintana Roo state on the Caribbean coast.