On December 7, 2017, Australia became the 25th country to legalise same-sex marriage, three weeks after 61.6 per cent of participants voted yes in the divisive postal survey first floated by then Prime Minister Tony Abbott and instigated by his successor Malcolm Turnbull.
The campaign to get there was an intensely turbulent period for the LGBTIQ+ community, with the one-year anniversary bringing back memories both jubilant and painful for many. A similar emotional rollercoaster plays out in stirring documentary No Dress Code Required (Etiqueta no Rigurosa) currently screening as part of this year’s .
Directed by Mexico City-based filmmaker Cristina Herrera Borquez, it traces the fraught journey to the altar of Fernando Amparo, her sometime hairdresser back in her hometown of Mexicali, the capital city of northern state Baja California. A man renowned for making countless brides feel fabulous on their big day, he was refused the same right to marry his partner in life and business Victor Espinoza.
The Mexican Supreme Court ruled in favour of marriage equality way back in August 2010. Borquez remembers it as a joyous moment. “It was such a celebration, everyone was like, ‘how could this happen?’ But it wasn’t quite as simple in practice, with all states outside of Mexico City fiercely resisting in this deeply Catholic country, in a sort of inverse of the USA pathway. That included Baja California.
No Dress Code Required follows the dramatic ups and downs as Amparo and Espinoza fight for their rights, with both the homophobic local mayor and state governor placing increasingly ridiculous hurdles in their way, including faked bomb threats and a mental health challenge. But the men, their family and friends hold tight. Shooting over several years and on a tiny budget, Borquezwas swept up in their case but had to maintain a documentarian’s slight remove.
“It very hard, because not only was the cause for me very black and white, this is their right and we have to protect it, but also these are two people that I deeply care about, so it was hard for me not to intervene or react, but I made a conscious decision not to.”
When her emotions grew too strong, she turned the camera off. Of course it was even more full on for the lads. “I don’t think they understood how big of a toll it was going to take on their everyday lives,” she says. “It was more of a wave, they were in the middle of something and they just had to ride through it. There was a point when they knew there was no turning back, so if the punches kept coming, they just had to deal with them. And they kept coming and coming until they were kind of numb to them.”
'No Dress Code Required' follows the dramatic ups and downs as Amparo and Espinoza fight for their rights. Source: YouTube
She was amazed by their resilience and good humour. “I don’t know many people who would have dealt with everything that was thrown in in their faces as well as they did. I am so proud of their determination and their strength.”
Much like the fight in Australia, winning marriage equality in Baja California required the help of straight allies, most notably the lawyer who took up the grooms-to-be’s case. “He deserves so much credit,” Borquez says. “He was he a straight person who had no gay people around him. His parents are actually in so many of the shots, because they supported him every step of the way. If they could understand and change their minds, why can’t we all?”
As Borquez followed the case, she learned more and more about similar fights globally, including our protracted battle here in Australia. “It was hard to believe that in what we consider first world countries equality either hadn’t come or had only just come. We figured that in our country, well yeah there is going to be resistance, but we thought it would come from the public. Never did we think that there was going to be government resistance once the order was there from the Supreme Court.”
As queer rights campaigners turn towards the next battlegrounds in Australia, Borquez, who now has a young daughter, says there’s still a lot of work to do to achieve true equality in Mexico too. “At the beginning Victor and Fernando were thinking about adopting, which they are now looking at, and I remember a bunch of their friends saying, ‘you do know that the same people that are supporting your marriage might, when it comes to the topic of adoption, be completely against it,’ and that has happened. And trans rights are something that Mexicans don’t want to talk about, so we have a long way to go.”
"Never did we think that there was going to be government resistance once the order was there from the Supreme Court.” Source: YouTube
Opening at the Guadalajara International Film Festival, the ultimately uplifting No Dress Code Required has been warmly received globally. Amparo and Espinoza are now minor celebrities at home. “It’s a lot harder to get an appointment with Fernando now,” Borquez chuckles. "They’re super busy.”
