The first gay couple to register to marry as a new marriage law in
Uruguay took effect on August 5 has tied the knot.
Sergio Miranda and Rodrigo Borda married in Montevideo on Thursday
morning before roughly 30 friends and family and almost 100 members
of the media, daily El Observador reported.
However, the nation's first gay couple to marry was a male couple
in their 60s who were given a waiver to marry on the day the law took
effect because one of the men is terminally ill. The wedding took
place in a Montevideo hospital and was described by a witness as
“very special.”
“While in Russia they incite violence and hunt us down and kill
us like the Nazi regime, in Uruguay we can get married. We can
celebrate love. So I'm very happy to live in a country like Uruguay
and not like Russia,” Miranda is quoted as saying by the AFP.
The men met in 1999 during a Noche de la Nostalgia (Night
of Nostalgia), Uruguay's annual August 24 celebration in which
thousands of people cram into bars to dance the night away to the
hits of the 60s, 70s and 80s.
Since that night, Miranda told Spanish news agency Efe, they have
“never parted.”
Uruguay, which previously recognized gay couples with civil
unions, approved the marriage law in April, making it only the second
South American nation after Argentina to legalize gay nuptials.