News
2005-09-23
Spanish
government confident same-sex marriage will withstand legal
appeal
The
Spanish justice minister said Thursday that a planned
legal appeal by the conserva
The
Spanish justice minister said Thursday that a planned
legal appeal by the conservative opposition against
Spain's recently enacted same-sex marriage law will
likely fail in court. Juan Fernando Lopez Aguilar
spoke a day after the Popular Party leader, Mariano Rajoy,
confirmed that his party will file the suit before the
constitutional court and was forced to disavow remarks
by another senior member of the party who spoke out
against the idea.
Rajoy has said his party has no problem with
giving gay couples the same rights as heterosexual
ones but insists these unions should not be called
"marriage," as they are in the law passed in late June.
Lopez Aguilar said it is odd that the opposition
party would act against a law that he said simply
extends rights to people who do not have them. He said
that while in power, the Popular Party opposed the
now-ruling Socialists' drives to give more rights to
same-sex couples. The party, he said, "absolutely did
not want to recognize the rights of those people and
now says it only has a problem with the word"
marriage, the minister said in a television interview.
The Socialists' spokesman in parliament, Alfredo
Perez Rubalcaba, seized on the divisions that emerged
Wednesday in the conservative party over the planned
legal challenge, questioning Rajoy's control over the party.
The president of the Madrid regional government,
the Popular Party's Esperanza Aguirre, said the
lawsuit is a bad idea because it makes the party look
like it opposes gays. Rajoy rejected her remarks, saying the
decision is his and reflects "the feelings of many
Spaniards, many of them supporters of the Popular
Party and others that are not."
Rubalcaba said the party is "enormously
conservative" and has a leadership "that is not at all
well-entrenched, that wavers and changes its mind
because of influences that sometimes are within the
party and not seen and sometimes are outside."
This may have been an allusion to former prime
minister Jose Maria Aznar, who ruled for eight years
until April 2004. The Socialists routinely accuse the
Popular Party of being still dominated by Aznar.
Spain's parliament passed the same-sex marriage
law on June 30, becoming the world's third country to
give full legal recognition to same-sex unions. Canada
became the fourth in July. The other two are the
Netherlands and Belgium. (AP)
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