When rights clash with religion

last updated 8 January 2015

Spain

Editorial

Society is ready for gay marriage, even if the church isn’t, said Madrid’s El País in an editorial. When Congress passed a bill that opened up the institution of marriage to homosexual couples, there was a predictable outcry from religious conservatives. But the dissent is no stronger than was “the opposition to divorce in its day, and now all of society accepts divorce as normal.” We can expect the same evolution here. One could argue, as some conservative parties are now doing, that the legislature should have had a longer political debate on the issue. Perhaps a drawn-out discussion would have been more politically palatable, but the end result would have been the same. “Spanish society has already made up its mind”; poll after poll shows a strong majority in favor of extending full legal rights to homosexual couples. The Catholic Church is free to condemn the law—in fact, the new pope already has. And the church can certainly refuse gays its religious blessing. But it can have no say in marriage as a civil contract. With this new law, Spain demonstrates once and for all that “a religious belief is not a valid legal argument.”