Source : lgbtqnation.com

The ceremony started, and without breaking eye contact Pedro and Erick switched between smiles and laughter. But the smiles eventually gave way to tears, as Pedro pulled away after saying his vows to wipe his eyes and Erick blinked as he choked up. There was heaviness behind the joy.

Just the previous week, before they had even thought about a wedding, both Erick and Pedro said they feared losing each other at the border. They are hopeful that being married will prevent them from being forcibly separated in the U.S. — but even though they aren’t sure of how it works on the other side, for now they are happy just to have the option of legal marriage.

“We’ve made a new life for ourselves and I need him. I wake up and he’s there. I go to bed and I can say good night,” Pedro said. “He’s made life bearable and I really cannot imagine them sending one of us back or splitting us up.”

Their arrival in Tijuana presented a unique opportunity for the caravan couples. In 2015 the Mexican Supreme Court ruled that state bans on same-sex marriage were unconstitutional, although some states still banned the practice. In November 2017, same-sex marriage became legal in Baja California, where Tijuana is located.

Like the majority of the group, Pedro and Erick plan to apply for asylum in the United States, citing discrimination and assaults. Pedro said he had been kicked out of his home at 15 and forced into prostitution before reluctantly moving back in. Erick said they decided to leave after gang members attacked him and smashed his mouth with a rock, knocking out four of his teeth. Neither one of their immediate families accepts their sexual identity.

But their stories are not uncommon ones to hear from members of the LGBTQ community in Central America. Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, where the bulk of the migrants in the caravan, do not recognize same-sex marriage or legally recognize trans people based on their gender identity. The countries already have some of the highest rates of violence in the world, and the threats are particularly acute for members of the LGBTQ community.

Honduras, for instance, is one of the most dangerous countries for LGBTQ people. From 2012 to 2017, there were 196 murders of LGBTQ people in the country, according to Cattrachas, a Honduran lesbian rights organization. During that time in the U.S., there were 167 individual reports of anti-LGBTQ homicides—216 when including the Pulse nightclub shooting, according to the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs.

The U.S. has roughly 326 million people. Honduras has around nine million.

In El Salvador, “while engaged in law enforcement, members of the police and military have raped, beaten, stalked, arbitrarily searched, arbitrarily detained, extorted, intimidated, and threatened LGBTQ people,” the Georgetown Law Human Rights Institute found. At least 145 LGBTQ people have been killed in the country in the past three years, according to local Salvadoran organizations.

“I feel so happy for this opportunity. We’ve always wanted this, but in our country, you cannot,” said Erick. “The only thing in my mind when we were up there in front of everyone was, ‘I’m doing this with the person I love most in the world.’”