Where the hell is Blake? Valdés: IFE has "full authority" to investigate complaints.

Head of the Federal Electoral Institute, Leonardo Valdés, after receiving a legal complaint from the national branch of the PRD, notably declared that the institute has "full authority" to investigate the claims that the church is breaking the COFIPE, or federal electoral law of constitutional rank, as well as constitutional articles regarding the role of religious organizations in Mexico. As such, IFE has the authority to pass on the case to the interior ministry, should it find the church guilty of constitutional transgressions. 


Yet the million-peso question is: Where the hell is José Francisco Blake Mora?
We must not lose sight of the fact that it was the PGR, or the national Attorney General-Prosecutor, that complained the alleged unconstitutionality of the gay weddings to the Supreme Court in the first place. As is now well known, the Supreme Court dismissed the Calderón-instigated complaint, and the issue is now blowing up in the president's face, chiefly due to the virulent and very public reactions of the church. While it is likely too much to ask that the president would take responsibility and ask the church to cool its tempers, one would certainly expect that the interior minister would make some kind of statement. 


Yet Blake's silence on this hugely important issue, which involves the defense of the constitution, the secular state, and Mexico's legal and democratic institutions, is, if a cliché is allowed, absolutely deafening. 

The church - and Calderón - is reaping what it sowed.

An ever growing chorus of voices condemns the Mexican church's intolerance and flouting of the Mexican constitution:


* Rubén Moreira Valdez, PRI national deputy from Coahuila, and the president of the Human Rights Commission in the Chamber of Deputies, responds: 

"Laws that permit marriage between the same sex and the right to adoption, do not not hurt the family; the injury happens when 'thugs' irresponsibly hurl curses or insults against people and institutions."

*Raúl Plascencia, Mexico City human rights ombudsman, calls on the catholic hierarchy to be tolerant and respect Mexico's institutions. 


* Ricardo Bucio, president of the National Council to Prevent Discrimination, said he will seek talks with the church to explain them the importance of not discriminating against others. 


* The PRD in Mexico City, for its part, filed a separate complaint to IFE, the Federal Electoral Institute, against cardinal Juan Sandoval Íñiguez and church spokesman Hugo Valdemar for calling upon people outright to note vote for the PRD, and for its many hateful statements against the political party. In my view, the party has demonstrated much patience in not doing so before. 


* Emilio Alvarez Icaza, El Universal: "Can someone tell them that the Middle Ages have ended?"

* José Cárdenas, prominent commentator, gets the final word in his column, entitled:  "Sandoval is a blight on society.""

"A blight is a scar. The product of a wound. In the body and the soul. An ailment. A vice that brands the sufferer. A blight is usually a depravedperson. Perverse. His Eminence, Cardinal Juan Sandoval, is all that. A blight on society. A homophobe. A hypocrite. Slander. He does not speak as a pastor. He speaks as a herder. Crude. He is abusive. He distorts the doctrine of christ. He discriminates. He uses the cross as a sword. He confuses religious dogma and law. He is sweeping in the sewers of the secular state. He abuses the name of  god. He poisons." 

Amen to that.