Gay rights in Mexico is a tricky subject — same-sex marriage is legal in 12 of 31 states plus Mexico City, and gay marriages are federally recognized. However, it’s still not technically legal to marry freely nationwide. On Wednesday, in an important step toward supporting same-sex unions, Mexico recognized a gay couple’s U.S. marriage, paving the way for other Mexicans living abroad to exercise their own right to marry freely. On Nov. 26, Daniel Berezowsky and Jaime Chávez Alor, both Mexican men living in New York City, tied the knot at the Mexican consul general’s home on the Upper East Side. The New York Times reported that Berezowsky and Chávez Alor initially attempted to get a marriage license at the General Consulate of Mexico in New York, but were denied because gay marriage isn’t a federally legalized right. “When we were rejected, we had two options,” Berezowsky told Gay City News. “Either say ‘OK,’ and get married whenever it happens in Mexico, or we can continue fighting for this.”