WORLD VIEWS: Spain reacts to new gay marriaage law - SF Gate

WORLD VIEWS: Will Live 8 relieve poverty?; Spain reacts to new gay marriaage law; U.S. press cowed by Bush Administration
- Edward M. Gomez, special to SFGate
Wednesday, July 6, 2005

Spain's new gay marriage law, passed by the parliament just two days earlier, gave last Saturday's gay pride marchers in Madrid something special to celebrate. The law also allows gay and lesbian couples to adopt children. (EITB24) Starting this week, homosexual couples began turning up at civil-registry offices around Spain to become legally married in one of Europe's traditionally most Catholic countries. (Terra España)

An editorial in El País, the more progressive Spanish daily, noted that, with the new law, "so-called gay pride" has "extended its limits to become [a kind of] citizens' pride" in the spreading of democratic values more broadly throughout Spanish society. The paper noted that "rejection of gay marriage" by "the most conservative sectors," including the leadership of the Catholic Church, could not be overlooked, but it called the conservatives' "analysis" of the impact of gay marriage on Spanish society "exaggerated." It predicted that "the new [social] norm [will] not interfere with [the church's] canonical marriage nor does it [imply] an attempt to
destroy the family." (Cited by Libertad Digital) The new law replaces such conventional, civil-registry terms as "man and wife" with "spouses" and "mother and father" with "parents." (Deutsche Presse Agentur/Monsters and Critics)

Spanish film director Pedro Almodóvar, who is gay, reacted to news of the new law and told reporters: "I don't like marriage. I am not going to get married. But it is important for this to be called marriage so people know that it is the same thing for everyone." (EITB24) About the new law's adoption provision, Almodóvar said: "[T]he family is a nucleus around a child. . . . A child needs affection, care and education, and where there are two people who give him those things, that child is going to be grateful to them all his life, and those two persons will have created a family." (Venevision.net)

In Spain, a conservative Catholic organization, the Family Forum, has asked the government of Socialist Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero to call a nationwide referendum on the gay-marriage issue. (Diario de León) The group also wants conservative Spanish lawmakers to file a lawsuit "to have [the new law] declared unconstitutional on grounds that marriage can only be the union of a man and a woman." The Family Forum claims "Zapatero is silencing traditional Spanish families." (Associated Press/Guardian) The
head of Spain's Episcopal Conference said the law will "introduce an immense
confusion in the moral and human order" of Spanish society. (Diario Vasco)

Members of the conservative Popular Party, which had opposed the gay-marriage bill, shouted, "This is a disgrace!" after the parliamentary vote was counted.(EITB24) (Around Europe, other political conservatives, like Italy's Reforms Minister Roberto Calderoli, also condemned the Spanish vote. Calderoli scoffed: "What has happened today in Spain . . . is the latest act against God and nature.") (Agence France Presse/Taiwan News)

Speaking to the Congress of Deputies, the main chamber of Spain's parliament, before voting on the gay-marriage legislation took place, Zapatero said: "We are not the first to adopt such a law but I am sure we will not be the last; many other countries will come after, pushed by two unstoppable forces, liberty and equality." He added: "We are not legislating for people remote or unknown, we are increasing the chances of happiness for our neighbors, our friends, our work colleagues, the members of our family. . . . [Homosexuals] are only a minority but their triumph is a triumph for everybody, their victory makes us all better, makes our society better." (Agence France Presse/Taiwan News)

Despite his party's opposition to the new law, Francisco Javier Gómez, the head of the conservative Popular Party's association of gay and lesbian members, is one of the first Spaniards who said he planned to take advantage of it. Javier Gómez even had a particular government official in mind to officiate at his forthcoming civil-marriage ceremony. That well-known civil servant, if he's willing to do the job, would be Alberto Ruiz-Gallardón, the Popular Party mayor of Madrid. (El Mundo and Euroresidentes)