Article: Gay Marriage /Adoption Unfolds in Spain

Marriages not made in heaven
Apr 28th 2005 | MADRID
From The Economist print edition

As Spain legalises gay marriage, clergy react angrily—and politicians unpredictably

Not everyone's cheering

ON THE evidence of history, the Catholic authorities of Spain do not deal gently with those who dissent from religious orthodoxy. Small wonder, perhaps, that this ancient bastion of Catholicism should be the scene of the first big bust-up between the church and a European state under the new papacy of Benedict XVI, who has pledged to reaffirm the continent's Christian heritage.

Emboldened by the enthronement of a leader after his own, conservative heart, the head of the Vatican's Council on the Family—who happens to be a Spanish-speaker, Cardinal Alfonso López Trujillo of Colombia—has reacted furiously to a new piece of Spanish legislation, allowing homosexuals to marry and to adopt children. Calling the law “iniquitous”, the cardinal had urged municipal bureaucrats to refuse to officiate at gay wedding ceremonies, even if it means losing their jobs.

So not for the first time, a Catholic prelate from a Latin country is weighing in against a socialist government, over a sensitive moral issue, and giving heart to the conservative opposition. So far, so very familiar, you may say. But things are more complex than they look.

For one thing, there are some supporters of the People's Party, the centre-right opposition, whose anti-gay zeal is an embarrassment to their fellows. Take Lluís Caldentey, the mayor of the Catalan town of Pontons: he was expelled from the PP after saying homosexuals were “physically or psychologically handicapped” and observing that he “had never seen two male dogs trying to make love.”

Sensing there might be some political capital in denouncing his adversaries' homophobia, the socialist prime minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, has challenged Spain's conservatives to “look into the eyes of homosexuals, and tell them they are second-class citizens.”

Not everybody has responded to this tactic as the government hoped. While in most cases their language has been more cautious than Mr Caldentey's, dozens of right-wing mayors all over Spain have taken a similar stance, saying they will refuse to conduct ceremonies which offend their conscience—despite the government's insistence that when a law has been approved by parliament, state officials have no choice but to apply it. Nor, say the dissenters, are they prepared to take the easy way out and leave gay weddings to more liberal-minded colleagues.

“I intend not to exercise this authority [to marry gay couples] and not to delegate it to other municipal officials,” insists Javier León de la Riva, the mayor of Valladolid. His counterpart in the town of Ávila has praised him for his “manly stance”.

Yet the leadership of the centre-right is uneasy about these implied threats to break the law. It insists, rather carefully, that all it opposes is the adoption of children by gay couples, and the use of the word matrimonio, a term which has clear religious overtones, to describe same-sex unions. What the PP is not questioning—says its leader, Mariano Rajoy—is the state's formal recognition of gay partnerships. He also insists that his supporters in local government must clench their teeth and obey the law—and has produced 16 PP mayors who say they are willing to do so. One PP politician in Valencia's regional assembly reacted to the law by announcing his own homosexuality.

But even among the ruling socialists, there are some whose Catholic conscience has clearly been troubled by the new legislation. Dissent in the ranks of the government has surfaced in embarrassing ways. José Bono, the traditionally minded defence minister, is said to have applauded heartily after attending a dinner in Rome at which a conservative cardinal laid out his opposition to Spain's gay-marriage policy—while his colleague Juan Fernando López Aguilar, the justice minister, sat nearby in stony silence.

The socialist mayor of La Coruña, Francisco Vázquez, is another Catholic of the left: he has given warning that he will not support the bill in the Senate, where it may conceivably be defeated with the assistance of Basque and Catalan conservatives. The measure would then have to be resubmitted to the Cortes, or lower house—where the socialists have a majority, but would nonetheless face another round of bruising arguments.

Shortly before his death, Pope John Paul II scolded Spain's socialists—who had moved to make divorce and abortion easier, and to permit stem-cell research—for pursuing a form of secularism that “restricts religious freedom”. Mr Zapatero's relations with the new pope promise to be stormy too.