Gay Marriage Law Alarms Spain's Religious Leaders

Spain has become the third country in Europe to legalise gay marriage, with parliament also giving same-sex couples the right to adopt children.

The move by the Socialist government of this traditionally Roman Catholic country yesterday provoked the ire of the church, which has found itself increasingly at odds with the prime minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, since he took power a year ago.

A petition signed by half a million opponents of gay marriage had earlier been handed in to the parliament.

Mr Zapatero's Socialists won the support of several small parties as the bill was passed by 183 votes in favour, 136 against, with six abstentions in the 350-seat lower chamber.

"This is a historic day for everybody who believes in equality, justice and rights," said Beatriz Gimeno, president of the country's Federation of Lesbians, Gays and Transexuals.

Catholic, Protestant, Jewish and Islamic leaders, however, joined together yesterday to condemn the new law, which looks set to be rubber-stamped by Spain's upper house, the senate, before the summer.

Spain's Roman Catholic bishops have claimed the law brings "a danger of the weakening of the institution of marriage and, at the same time, of proper social order".

The phrase "matrimony shall have the same requisites and effects regardless of whether the persons involved are of the same or different sex" should now be added to Spain's law books.

"This is an initiative that brings up to date a question of rights within society," said the justice minister, Juan Fernando López Aguilar. "It is a reform that improves people's lives."

Belgium and the Netherlands are the only two other European countries that have legalised gay marriage so far.

Spaniards are more liberal about the issue than might be expected in a traditionally Catholic country.

An opinion poll by the government's Centre for Sociological Investigations last year revealed that 66% of Spaniards favoured legalising gay marriage, while only 26% were against it.

The law may, however, face a challenge before the country's constitutional tribunal after the General Council of Judicial Power, an official advisory body which has a conservative majority, claimed that "gay" and "marriage" were incompatible terms.

"Heterosexuality is an essential part of the whole concept of matrimony," it said. "Matrimony is either heterosexual, or it is not matrimony."