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(Madrid) Spain's lower house on Thursday passed legislation to legalize same-sex marriage.

The bill to allow gay marriage was relatively short, saying that "Matrimony shall have the same requisites and effects regardless of whether the persons involved are of the same or different sex''.. It also allows gays to adopt children.

The measure passed with 183 votes in favor, 136 against and six abstentions. It now goes to the Senate where Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero's Socialists have ample support.

The Senate will vote in the coming weeks and the first same-sex marriages could begin this summer.

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[ 07 March 2006: Message edited by: Hephaestion ]

Passed:
Netherlands
Belgium

hehe...

Sunday Times

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POPE Benedict XVI has conferred with cardinals as he seeks to put an early stamp on the papacy, but already he faces his first test as pontiff over a controversial Spanish vote on gay marriage.

The cardinal head of the Pontifical Council on the Family, denouncing a Bill in Spain's lower house of parliament that would allow homosexuals to marry and adopt children, said Christians had a duty to oppose "iniquitous" laws.

"A law as profoundly iniquitous as this one is not an obligation, it cannot be an obligation," Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo told Italy's Corriere della Sera.

"One cannot say that a law is right simply because it is law."

[...]

Cardinal Trujillo said anyone asked to conduct such a ceremony should exercise the same right to conscientious objection as doctors asked to perform abort a fetus.

"This is not a matter of choice," he said.

"All Christians ... must be prepared to pay the highest price, including the loss of a job.

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A growing number of Spain's mayors say they will defy the government and refuse to perform same-sex marriages. Spain's lower house on earlier this month passed legislation to legalize same-sex marriage. (story)

The bill is expected to meet little opposition in the Senate and become law later this year. The legislation also requires public servants who normally perform marriages to officiate at same-sex ceremonies.

But, the mayors, all members of the conservative opposition party, say they will ignore the law.

[...]

"If the new law allows me to marry gay couples, I do not intend to exercise this authority," proclaimed Javier Leon de la Riva, the mayor of Valliadolid a town in Castile-Leon.

"For me its not a problem that these [gay] couples have the same rights as other citizens, but I think it is not correct to call these unions marriages".

Nearly a dozen other mayors quickly followed his lead.

The government of Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said the mayors could be fined or lose their jobs if they refuse to officiate at the ceremonies.

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Originally posted by babblerwannabe:
the mayors have no right to stop these marriages right?

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Well, not according to PM Zapatero, anyway.

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The government of Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said the mayors could be fined or lose their jobs if they refuse to officiate at the ceremonies.

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(queerday) Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero defended a new law allowing gay and lesbian couples to marry in a veiled counter-attack on the Roman Catholic Church which has thrown its weight against it.

"I will never understand those who proclaim love as the foundation of life, while denying so radically protection, understanding and affection to our neighbors, our friends, our relatives, our colleagues," Zapatero told parliament in a state of the nation address. "What kind of love is this that excludes those who experience their sexuality in a different way?" he said.

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El Mundo

There was, however, a manifesto read by a pro-equal-marriage group and an alternative party for gay allies in Barcelona.

The reactionaries in this march seem to consist mostly of Catholic clergy (who've started again to involve themselves in Spanish politics again after being relatively isolated after the fall of Franco) and members of the Partido Popular.

[ 20 June 2005: Message edited by: kurichina ]

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Spanish Senate rejects gay marriage

Spain's Senate on Wednesday defeated legislation that would legalize same-sex marriage - delivering a crushing blow to gay and lesbian couples and the government of Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero.

The opposition Popular Party and a small conservative party from the Catalonia region voted together to defeat the bill on a 131 - 119 vote.

The measure had passed the Congress, Spain's lower house in April, and was expected to pass easily in the Senate.

Following the vote a spokesperson for Zapatero said that the bill would now return to the lower house where the government would use an override provision in the constitution to force the legislation through.

[...]

Yesterday, before debate on the bill began, the leader of the PP apologized for remarks made Monday at a committee hearing on the bill.

Aquilino Polaino, a psychology professor at Madrid's Catholic university, who was invited by the party to speak before the committee, called homosexuality a "disease" and said that gay adoption would turn children gay.

Polaino told the committee that homosexuality is "learned behavior" and "pathological in nature".

"A violent, hostile, distant or alcoholic father" or "a cold, over-protective mother" are what "causes" homosexuality which can lead those so afflicted to depression and to seek solace in drugs, Polaino said.

He then told the committee that gays and lesbians would influence the sexuality of children in their homes adding that he would wager that in 10 years those adopted by same-sex couples would sue the government and demand compensation for "having agreed to allow the break up of their personal identity".

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More on these filthy, lying swine...

[ 23 June 2005: Message edited by: Hephaestion ]

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Spain's lower house of parliament has voted in favour of allowing gay couples to marry and adopt children. The controversial decision overrules last week's rejection of the bill by the upper house, the Senate.

The bill will become law in a month's time, making Spain Europe's third nation after the Netherlands and Belgium to allow same sex marriages. About 5,000 gay couples in Spain have already announced they are queuing up to say "I do."

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Originally posted by kurichina:
xref=20050630elpepusoc_5&type=Tes&anchor=elpporsoc]Partido Popular are looking for a way of declaring the SSM law unconstitutional[/URL]. Leader Mariano Rajoy, or as my Spanish friend said, "el hijo de puta" is trying to challenge this law at the Constitutional Tribunal.

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The law legalizing gay marriage in Spain has cleared its last bureaucratic formality - being published in an official government registry - and takes effect on Sunday.

An official of the ruling Socialist party, which sponsored the law, said the party will now seek legislation to protect Spain's estimated 8,000 transsexuals.

The gay marriage law, passed Thursday by the lower house of parliament, was published Saturday in the gazette, the Boletin Oficial del Estado, which records all government decisions in Spain. The document specified that the new law will go into effect Sunday.

The law was signed by King Juan Carlos and Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero.

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Originally posted by Hephaestion:
The law legalizing gay marriage in Spain has cleared its last bureaucratic formality - being published in an official government registry - and takes effect on Sunday.

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Jubilant over a new law legalizing gay marriage, hundreds of thousands of people packed the torrid streets of Madrid on Saturday, banging drums, dancing to booming techno music and crying victory over discrimination.

"This is infinitely gay," Ivan Sanchez, a 26-year-old pharmacist, said in the din of a throng snaking its way through Spain's capital.

"There are no words to express it. We are all equal."

"The constitution itself says so. Both men and women are equal," he said on the day the law cleared its last bureaucratic formality, being published Saturday in an official government registry.

The law takes effect Sunday.

Flatbed trucks crowded with young men and women honked their horns as they made their way through the streets under a blazing summer sun in a procession led by Culture Minister Carmen Calvo and other members of the governing Socialist party, which sponsored the law.

"Now that some of us are more free, all Spaniards are more free," said Cholo Soto, 30, a government clerk who joined the march.

The Interior Ministry put attendance at 100,000 but the turnout looked much bigger.

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Spain's new gay marriage law hit its first snag Wednesday as a court said a Spanish man can't wed his Indian partner because India does not allow same-sex marriage.

The Supreme Court of Justice of Catalonia cited an article in the Spanish civil code which says foreign residents seeking to wed Spaniards are bound by the laws of the country where they have citizenship. The Indian man is resident of Spain but holds an Indian passport.

The dispute erupted Tuesday, six days after Spain's parliament made this country the third in the world to legalize gay marriage. The others are Netherlands and Belgium. Canada is expected to legalize gay marriage later this month.

The court's comments - released in a statement prompted by media inquiries, not in a formal ruling - suggest that for the time being at least, gay Spaniards seeking to marry foreigners can only do so with people from the Netherlands and Belgium.

The Spanish Justice Ministry did not return calls seeking comment.

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Two gay Madrid area men Monday became Spain's first same-sex couple to legally marry.

Carlos Baturin German and Emilio Menendez Menendez exchanged vows as family, friends and a bevy of news photographers looked on in the council chamber in the Madrid suburb of Tres Cantos.

"I declare you united in matrimony," declared the city marriage efficient. The couple then exchanged a hug and exchanged rings, although they declined to kiss for the cameras.

German, a psychiatrist and Menendez, a window dresser for a store have been together for 30 years.

They said that they had not intended to be the first to legally wed but it just worked out that way.

"We're normal people who love each other and want to be happy," Menendez told reporters outside of the town hall following the brief ceremony.

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Spain's same-sex marriage law applies to foreigners

Spain's justice ministry has ruled that the country's same-sex marriage law allows marriage to a foreigner regardless of whether that person's homeland recognizes the partnership, resolving a snag that arose last month.

Lawmakers in June made Spain the world's third country to legalize same-sex marriage, following the Netherlands and Belgium. Canada has since become the fourth.

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Constitutional Court was asked on Monday to declare the three month old law allowing same-sex couples to wed illegal.

The legal challenge to the law was mounted by the Popular Party, Spain's largest opposition party.

"The Popular Party is in no doubt over the issue of gay marriages, which is why we are challenging the constitutionality of the government's legislation allowing them," said Agnel Acebes the party's secretary general. 

[...]

The party led the attack on same-sex marriage in Parliament. At Senate committee hearings the party produced a psychology professor at Madrid's Catholic university who called homosexuality a "disease" and said that gay adoption would turn children gay.

"A violent, hostile, distant or alcoholic father" or "a cold, over-protective mother" are what "causes" homosexuality which can lead those so afflicted to depression and to seek solace in drugs, said Prof. Aquilino Polaino

[...]

The conservative Forum for the Family also has lodged an appeal with the Constitutional Court as have two regional judges.

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[ 20 September 2005: Message edited by: Hephaestion ]

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Spain's largest opposition party is deeply divided on a legal challenge to the law allowing same-sex marriage - with some members reportedly threatening to quit.

The Popular Party earlier this week asked the Constitutional Court to declare the three month old law illegal.

The cracks in the usually tight knit party emerged Thursday and threaten its chances of winning the next election.

Esperanza Aguirre, the president of the Madrid regional government and a powerful presence in the Popular Party called the lawsuit "ill-advised" and said it would make the party appear homophobic. Aguirre said that a large number of PP members support her view.

The public rebuke took party leader Mariano Rajoy by surprise and forced him to defend his stewardship of the PP. Rajoy told reporters in Madrid that he made the decision to file the lawsuit because it reflected the views of most Spaniards.

The divisions within the party were seized on by the governing Socialists. Justice Minister Juan Fernando Lopez Aguilar accused the PP of homophobia and said that it "did not want to recognize the rights of" the gay people.

Lopez Aguilar noted that when the PP formed the government it thwarted every attempt the Socialists made to expand LGBT civil rights. Lopez Aguilar also predicted that the party's case before the Constitutional Court will fail.

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Hmmm, let's see... opposing every attempt to expand LGBT civil rights... now who does that remind me of over here...?

[ 22 September 2005: Message edited by: Hephaestion ]

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his fascist, homophobic persecutors

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A majority of Spaniards believe the country's conservative opposition party is wrong in seeking to overturn gay marriage legislation.

A new poll, taken this week, shows that 60 percent of voters do not want the Popular Party to fight same-sex marriage. Only 29 percent see the move by the PP as positive.

[...]

The new poll, by Instituto Opina, is an indication that the PP has not gained any traction over the issue of same-sex marriage and that continued opposition to gays would not help it in the next election.

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Originally posted by Hephaestion:
The new poll, by Instituto Opina, is an indication that the PP has not gained any traction over the issue of same-sex marriage and that continued opposition to gays would not help it in the next election.

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Spain's Constitutional Court on Friday said it would hear a challenge to the law which allows same-sex marriage.

[...]

The Spanish Federation of Gays and Lesbians said it believes the court will uphold the law.

"We are sure that the gay marriage law is completely constitutional because it could not be otherwise. A law with increases rights and does not restrict any other right has to enter into this or any other constitution," said president Beatriz Gimeno.

The government said Friday it will mount a "vigorous defense" of the laws."

[...]

The conservative Forum for the Family also has lodged an appeal with the Constitutional Court as have two regional judges. It is believed the Constitutional Court will hear all three appeals together.

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(Madrid)  Hundreds of right-wing demonstrators made stiff-armed fascist salutes and shouted insults against gays, Muslims and immigrants at a rally Sunday marking the 30th anniversary of the death of dictator Gen. Francisco Franco.

Waving red and yellow Spanish flags with the insignia of the Franco regime's Falange party, the crowd gathered at the Plaza de Oriente, right beside the royal palace in Madrid's old quarter.[...]

Representatives of far-right parties from Germany, Italy and France attended the gathering. Police declined to give an estimate of how many people were there, but one officer estimated the crowd at a thousand, or slightly more.[...]

Franco supporters are a small minority in Spain and there is no significant far-right party. The demonstrators ranged in age from the elderly to young couples pushing strollers with babies. Boys in their teens or younger walked around wrapped in the Spanish flag.

Blas Pinar, the aging leader of a largely defunct far-right party called New Force, said Franco had transformed Spain from a country riddled with poverty and illiteracy into one with "enviable industrial development" and an acute, unified national identity.

Still, Franco today is dismissed as "a mediocre military leader, ambitious and bloodthirsty, a man who enjoyed imposing the death penalty and whose monuments are removed under the cover of night, with hatred," Pinar said.

He depicted Spain's post-Franco, democratic constitution of 1978 as the root of all ills in a country he described as riddled with crime, decadence and regional separatism -- mainly from Basques and Catalans -- that threatens to break the country apart.

His grandson, Miguel Menendez Pinar, spoke insultingly of homosexuals and Muslims and said: "Spain is dying, or better said, Spain is being murdered." The crowd roared in agreement.

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[ 22 November 2005: Message edited by: Hephaestion ]

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(Madrid) Spain's highest court has, for the time being, upheld the constitutionality of a law allowing same-sex couples to marry.

Two regional judges had challenged the validity of the law, arguing in separate cases that it violated the country's constitution.

In a split decision by the Constitutional Court the two cases were rejected, but only on procedural grounds.  

However, another challenge to the law, by the opposition Popular Party, has not been considered by the High Court yet.  The court said it will hear arguments in the case at a later date.

In the meantime, the two judges who challenged the law will be required to perform same-sex marriages.

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(Madrid) Spain's highest court has, for the time being, upheld the constitutionality of a law allowing same-sex couples to marry.

Two regional judges had challenged the validity of the law, arguing in separate cases that it violated the country's constitution.

In a split decision by the Constitutional Court the two cases were rejected, but only on procedural grounds.  

However, another challenge to the law, by the opposition Popular Party, has not been considered by the High Court yet.  The court said it will hear arguments in the case at a later date.

In the meantime, the two judges who challenged the law will be required to perform same-sex marriages.

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A judge who failed to get Spain's highest court to declare same-sex marriage unconstitutional has resigned.

"I find it morally impossible for me to marry homosexual couples, and therefore I could not apply that law, Judge Antonio Alonso said in his letter of resignation.

Alonso, from Printo, just outside Madrid, was one of two judges who challenged the law. In October he refused in October to marry a gay couple, and appealed to the Constitutional Court.

In a split decision earlier this month the court rejected their cases on procedural grounds, saying that civil registrars did not have the right to lodge a case on constitutional issues.

A third challenge, brought by the opposition Popular Party, has not been considered by the High Court yet. The court said it will hear arguments in the case at a later date.

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Spain is about to join the Netherlands, Canada and a growing number of other countries that grant political asylum to gays and the transgendered.

People fleeing their homelands over persecution over their sexuality would be granted status under the new law proposed by the government of Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero.

Sexuality is not specifically regarded as grounds for asylum in the United States. Last month a gay Zimbabwe man who says he faces persecution at home has had his appeal for asylum rejected by a federal appeals court. (story)

[...]

Last April in Britain a gay Iranian man under a deportation order killed himself rather than be returned to a country where homosexuality is punishable by death. (story)

A spokesperson for the Spanish government said it was amending its asylum laws to bring the country into line with other "progressive" countries.

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Since same-sex marriage became legal in Spain last year more than 1,000 gay and lesbian couples have wed a high-ranking government official said Thursday.

Pedro Zerolo, a senior member of the governing Socialist Party said that 800 same-sex marriages officially have been recorded but that the figure represents only about half of the country - those areas that are fully computerized.

Zerolo said that at least 200 marriages have been performed in other parts of Spain.

"As of today, there should be more than 1,000 same-sex couples married and about the same number of applications in processing," Zerolo, who is openly gay, told reporters in Madrid.

He said that one out of every ten marriages in Spain involves a same-sex couple.

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Since same-sex marriage became legal in Spain last year more than 1,000 gay and lesbian couples have wed a high-ranking government official

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(Madrid) Transsexuals convicted of crimes in Spain will soon be allowed to serve their sentences in either men's or women's prisons a Madrid newspaper reports.

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