Catholic World News News Feature
Spanish pro-family leader decries government policies June 20, 2005
The proposed Spanish law giving same-sex unions the legal status of marriage is clearly unconstitutional, according to a spokesman for the group that organized the massive June 18 pro-family demonstration in Madrid.
In an interview with the Fides news service, Benigno Blanco, the vice-president of the Spanish Famiily Forum, said that his group was not seeking to generate hostility toward homosexuals, but simply to defend the family and marriage.
The full text of the Fides interview follows:
Fides: ??What causes and goals are at the origin of this policy against life and the family being imposed in Spain and many other countries?
Fides: Spain is considering giving same-sex unions the same status as marriage. Can a law be allowed to overturn the law of nature?
Blanco: Why are they in such a hurry to legalize these unions? ?If everything is marriage then nothing is marriage.
The most serious juridical consequence of this law is that the term "matrimony" will refer to a wide range of situations and relations between adults who feel affection for one another and intend to have sexual relations. This means that marriage in the strict sense will disappear from the law, it will no longer have specific regulations.
Making same-sex unions equal to marriage will not solve the problem of homosexuals being deprived of rights, because they are not denied the right to marry, But instead they choose not to exercise this right, like priests for example. What the law will do is to deprive matrimony of juridical regulations.
A law cannot go against the law of nature without making the latter illegal: in this case it makes matrimony illegal. This haste to pass a law is the haste to make homosexuality legitimate in the eyes of public opinion and to attack the family, which is seens as a "structure of oppression" by those who want sexuality without brakes or responsibility. ??
Fides: Some say this law is clearly unconstitutional. Why? ?
Blanco: There is a widespread opinion among the most serious jurists in Spain that this law is unconstitutional. This has been affirmed by the former president of the Constitutional Court, Rodríguez Bererijo, and many magistrates and university professors.
The most consistent argument on the unconstitutionality of the law has been put forward by two major bodies: the Council of State and the General Council of Judicial Power. Both separately advised the government to withdraw the law, because article 32 of the Spanish Constitution guarantees the institution of matrimony as a right of every man and woman. This makes it impossible for any ordinary legislator to change the essential nature of marriage as the union of a man and woman. The Spanish Family Forum has urged the Popular Party--the only group that can do it, because it has 50 members of parliament--to appeal to the Constitutional Court if the law is approved.
Fides: ??If homosexual couples are allow to adopt a child, will this not be a case of injustice and violence against children--the most vulnerable citizens, and an injustice protected by law? ?
Blanco: This would be a radical overturning of the principles which inspire the institution of adoption. At the moment adoption is a means of giving a minor who has lost his parents what he has lost: a mother and a father. Tomorrow it would be a means to allow certain adults to fulfill their own selfish desires with no regard for the children concerned. This is most serious: it is natural for the human species to live with a father and mother: assigning a child to grow up with two mothers or two fathers would be a social experiment using a child. A couple of homosexual men may be two good fathers but they cannot be a mother. Two lesbian women can be two good mothers but they are not a father.
In Spain, under the direction of psychiatrist Dr. Aquilino Polaino, a study was made of all the existing writings on the experience of a minor living with two homosexuals. The conclusion was clear: it is not advisable for both medical and psychiatric reasons. ??
Fides: Another problem in Spain is a debate on a new law on divorce. What is the new law about and what could be the consequences??
Blanco: The new law on divorce will mean that divorce may be obtained as early as three months after the wedding by one of the partners without presenting any reason and even if the other partner refuses. Hitherto a judge could grant permission for divorce only if serious reasons--violence, cruelty, drug abuse, abandonment of conjugal life, and so forth--were presented or after a period of separation accorded by a judge and not less than two consecutive years. In this way Spain goes from a remedy system of divorce to unilateral, free, no-fault divorce. This "reform" would mean that Spain’s judicial system no longer has any means to sustain the stability of marriage. With this law the legislator privatizes the institution of marriage to the point that it is difficult to distinguish from unions.
There is little public debate on the [divorce] law because the immeasurable gravity of the so-called "gay marriage" law has drawn all our attention. Both laws together represent an open attempt to destroy marriage.
This mixture of ideas, combined with a desire to exalt the individual as sole source of ethics, leads to the view that religion and all that its binds--sexual morals, marriage, etc.--is the last barrier to eliminate in order to achieve full freedom. This is the ideological background I perceive in the arguments put forward by the Spanish government even if very often they themselves ignore the source of their inspiration. ??
