Spain’s Showdown

Just weeks into his tenure, Pope Benedict XVI already has a fight on his hands. Last week, the lower house of Spain’s parliament approved the first reading of a measure to legalize same-sex marriages.

The bill, sponsored by the ruling Socialist party and almost certain to become law in time for Gay Pride day in June, has infuriated Spain’s Catholic leaders. Ricard María Cardinal Carles, Emeritus Archbishop of Barcelona, who supports the church’s prohibition of homosexuality, says that “to obey the law over conscience takes us back to Auschwitz.” Conservative mayors say they will refuse to marry gays, despite their legal obligation to do so if the law passes. Lluís Caldentey, the mayor of Pontons, a small town near Barcelona, has already been expelled by the Popular Party after describing homosexuals as “cretins, deficient and deformed.”

But the president of the Collective of Lesbians, Gays, Transsexuals and Bisexuals of Madrid, Arnaldo Gancedo, who is planning to wed his long-time partner, says the new law has “nothing to do with the Vatican. It is as if one state was interfering with the affairs of another. The Pope and his priests are entitled to their opinions, but they have no right to intervene in the lives of non-Catholics.” And most Spaniards seem fairly relaxed about the prospect of same-sex marriages — even in a country that until three decades ago sent homosexuals to prison or had them committed to mental hospitals.

A poll carried out by the Madrid-based Center for Sociological Investigation showed that 66% of people were in favor of same-sex marriages, compared to 26% opposed. “It just shows how far Spain has come in a relatively short time,” says Madrid teacher Isabel Flores. “There was much more outrage when divorce or abortion were legalized. Now, it seems as if only the lunatic fringe [is] really against gay marriages.”