MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Miguel Ángel Pichetto under heavy criticism for homophobic remarks

The sexual orientation of Lucio Dupuy's assassins coincides with that of the Women's Minister, an office that remained silent about the crime, Pichetto meant to underline but it backfired

Argentina's Comptroller General and former Vice-Presidential candidate Miguel Ángel Pichetto is to be investigated by the National Institute Against Discrimination (Inadi) for his remarks regarding Women's Minister Ayelén Mazzina.

“The Ministry of Women's Affairs is in the hands of a lesbian, they could have put a woman,” said the former Peronist Senator who joined the ranks of Mauricio Macri's Together for Change (Juntos por el Cambio - JxC) alliance in 2019.

Inadi Director Greta Pena said Pichetto had crossed boundaries no one should trespass. “I will summon @MiguelPichetto to attend Inadi to hold a meeting about the highly harmful implications of using stereotypes to settle public debates 40 years into democracy,” Pena wrote on Twitter. “There are limits that we cannot cross,” Pena stressed. One of those limits is “associating the sexual orientation and identity of a person with her suitability [for the job] or political position.”

The Women's Ministry remained silent when a mother and her lesbian lover killed 5-year-old Lucio Dupuy in a high-profile case in Argentina. The Ministry “is in the hands of a girl who is a lesbian, which is fine; I believe in individual freedom, I believe in the right to happiness, I voted for all the equality laws; but if it's the Ministry of Women, they could have put a woman [in charge]. And they could have made a coherent statement,” Pichetto had said in a TV interview.

“I am a woman, a lesbian, a feminist, and the Minister of Women, Genders, and Diversity of the Nation, and I invite Pichetto to talk about ESI [sexual education] whenever he feels ready,” Mazzina replied on social media.

President Alberto Fernández came out to support Mazzina and said he was “proud” of her work at the Ministry. “Closed minds do not admit the positive transformation that our society has undergone,” Fernàndez said on Twitter. “Dinosaurs are going to disappear,” Fernàndez added quoting a popular song by Charly García.

“Miguel Pichetto's subsequent clarifications, based on his praised participation as president of the Senators' Block of the Frente para la Victoria at the time of passing the Equal Marriage Law, do not cancel his unfortunate expressions,” Cabinet Chief Agustín Rossi said.

“The murder of Lucio Dupuy is a horrendous crime and its perpetrators have been sentenced by justice with the maximum penalty provided for in our Penal Code for this type of crime,” Rossi added.

Pichetto argued that his words had been misinterpreted and insisted on the Ministry's silence after the crime committed by a lesbian couple, one of its members also being the child's mother.

“In view of the misrepresentation of my statements in a TV program, I want to clarify that my intention was to denounce that the Ministry of Women did not repudiate the murder of Lucio Dupuy because the sexual orientation of the minister coincided with those of the perpetrators of the crime,” Pichetto argued.