Spain did it...why can't we?

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PlanetOut Network

SUMMARY: Spain took another step toward equal marriage rights on Thursday, when the Socialist government approved a bill that would allow same-sex couples to marry.



Spain took another step toward equal marriage rights on Thursday, when the Socialist government approved a bill that would allow same-sex couples to marry.


The legislation was approved during a weekly Cabinet meeting under Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero. Members of Parliament will get a chance to debate the bill in February, according to European news reports.


The bill, which Spain's powerful Catholic Church opposes, would modify 14 articles of the 1889 Civil Code, Agence France-Presse reported. Same-sex couples would be allowed to adopt children and inherit retirement benefits, among all the other rights enjoyed by married heterosexual couples.


If the legislation is enacted next year, Spain will become the third country in Europe -- behind the Netherlands and Belgium -- to permit same-sex couples to marry.


"The right to marry is a right for everyone, without distinction. It cannot be understood as a privilege," Deputy Prime Minister Maria Teresa Fernandez de la Vega told reporters after the Cabinet meeting. "The recognition of homosexuals' rights eradicates an unjustified discrimination."


Prime Minister Zapatero has been the driving force behind the marriage bill, as he promised during his successful election campaign last spring that he would enact liberal social changes.


Catholic bishops in the country reserved last Sunday as a national day of protest against legalizing same-sex marriage. In a published statement, the bishops said that "homosexual tendencies, even if not a sin, must be considered objectively as troubling."