Guatemala’s first openly gay congressman hasn’t taken office yet in the Central American country’s mostly conservative Congress, but death threats are keeping him on a strict schedule.
Aldo Davila, 41, a veteran HIV/AIDS and LGBT rights advocate, was elected two months ago, but he won’t take office until January 14.
Until then, due to the threats, he has stopped walking the streets of Guatemala City, the country’s capital city, where he lives with his partner, who wasn’t named in media reports. He only drives to his office and home.
He told Reuters that the growing fundamental Christian and evangelical movements in the Catholic-majority country has stifled the LGBT rights movement’s progress, changing people’s minds about queer people in the Central American country.
Davila ran representing the progressive Winaq Movement party on a platform promising to fight for rights for communities historically excluded from society.
LGBT Guatemalans enjoy some rights, such as employment and housing discrimination protections, serving in the military, and gender reassignment surgery.
Once in office, Davila, who is HIV-positive, plans to work for better health care for people living with HIV, push for hate crimes legislation, and draft a law that will allow transgender Guatemalans to legally change their sex on their legal documents. Currently, transgender people can only change their names, reported Reuters.
NewNowNext reported that HIV is a problem in Guatemala. HIV prevalence among gay men is 8%. Among trans people, the rate is 22.2%, with only an estimated third of the transgender population accessing antiviral therapy, according to UNAIDS.
One of the first tasks Davila will tackle when he does take his seat will be against the Life and Family Protection bill, which will ban same-sex marriage. The unusually restrictive marriage equality ban narrowly defines a man and a woman as being born as that sex at birth.
“This law is regressive,” said Davila. “It violates the human rights of people of diversity.”
The bill is currently in its third and final vote in the country’s Congress before being passed into law.
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