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May 04, 2005
Madrid-Massachusetts: Could the "gay-link" make us closer?
Sir, do you take this man to be your husband? Lady, do you take this woman to be your wife? Male-male and female-female weddings will be a common thing this summer in Spain. It is not likely to improve the relationship between George W. Bush and José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, his Spanish counterpart.
The Socialist government has just passed a law that makes Spain the third country in the world to allow gay marriage with the same rights as heterosexuals, after Holland and Belgium. And many couples are now preparing to say: "sí quiero" (yes I do) to their long time non-recognised partners. Taxes, inheritance and even child adoption -which is only allowed in Holland- are some of the rights gay couples have finally accomplished in this country.
Though the bill still has to pass through Senate, where the Conservatives hold the mayority, it's taken for granted that the proposition will become law around this summer, as even if its rejected at the Upper House of the Spanish Parliament it has to return to the Congress again, where it has a secured mayority.
The move comes almost a year after the Supreme Court of Massachusetts allowed gay marriages in that state, the only one in the US that legally recognises homosexual unions. Could this become a link uniting both countries? Hardly, I'm afraid.
George W. Bush has clearly declared his firm opposition to this kind of weddings, and the Spanish decision will likely not improve the -little- sympathy the US president has for his Spanish counterpart José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero.
Critics of gay marriage have also flourished in Spain, mostly in the ranks of the Catholic Church. The Church had recently lost a battle where it demanded that homosexual unions not be certified as “marriages” as it believed that only unions from the opposite sex could fully deserve such terminology.
Also, the Vatican, which has just welcomed a new Pope who has already
vowed to continue the same conservative line that defined John Paul II's papacy, hasn't waited long to condemn (once more) the Spanish leftist government for this measure. Colombian cardinal Alfonso López Trujillo, president of the Family Council in the Vatican, said that gay-marriage is an "inhuman" law that amounts to the "destruction of the family". The Vatican also urged the Spanish civil servants not to accept carrying out gay marriages, which would infringe the law.
The main Spanish opposition party, the Partido Popular (PP) of former
president José María Aznar, a close friend of Bush, isn't happy, either. Only one of its members of parliament voted affirmatively for the law. And its new leader, Mariano Rajoy, hasn't yet condemned the "disobedience-appeal" of the Church. Some local mayors of his party have already announced that they won't marry gay couples.
Fortunately, though, it's quite possible that more US gay citizens will decide to spend their next holiday in Spain, doing much good to Spanish tourism and, probably, to the better understanding of both
countries, at least between the "liberal" members of them.
Posted May 4, 2005 11:11 AM
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