A Toast to Wendy and Ignacio / Reinaldo Escobar

I had the enormous privilege of being the best man at the wedding of Wendy Iriepa and Ignacio Estrada, the first in Cuba between a transsexual and a gay man. I transcribe here the toast that I made:

I want to toast by the sun and by the moon. In Spanish, the first is masculine, the second feminine.

But in other languages, for example in German, they say “die Sonne” and “der Mond,” or the equivalent, completely the reverse of our language from the point of view of the assignment of genders. There you have grammar with its narrow concepts! Who shines more than this couple? Which here eclipses the other? Who emits, who reflects? Two stars, two people who just entwined their destinies. For as dark as the clouds may be, they always pass. We toast these newlyweds, be the word masculine or feminine as you prefer, by the light of each, and by everything they can reflect.

15 August 2011