What Kind of Love Excludes?

With so many cowards, especially in this country, refusing to stand up for their own gay friends, relatives and colleagues against the anti-gay supremacist onslaught of the religious right, it's heartening to be reminded that courage and hope still exist out there. How often people self-righteously shake their heads at the shameful complicity of others in the outrageous oppression of minority groups during times past yet all the while they themselves participate through silence in the growing state-sponsored oppression of gays today! Their justification, today for gays as it was then for others, always rests on supremacist ideologies, blatant lies, personal fears and prejudices. Zapatero is my new hero!

Wed May 11, 2005, MADRID (Reuters) - Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero defended a new law allowing gay couples to marry Wednesday, in a veiled counter-attack on the Roman Catholic Church which has thrown its weight against it.

The Spanish parliament last month gave initial approval to the law, prompting the Spanish Bishops' Conference to step up its campaign against the measure by calling on all Catholics to resist applying the new law.

"I will never understand those who proclaim love as the foundation of life, while denying so radically protection, understanding and affection to our neighbors, our friends, our relatives, our colleagues," Zapatero told parliament in a "state of the nation" address.

"What kind of love is this that excludes those who experience their sexuality in a different way?" he said.

The Church, traditionally powerful in Spain, says gay marriage harms society by threatening the very notion of family. It has urged mayors to refuse on grounds of conscience to celebrate same-sex weddings.

The government says it is not up to bishops to rule on a measure that affects only civil marriages, not church marriages.

"I am aware that this measure is one of the most controversial we have approved...(but) we cannot deny a right to many of our compatriots when the exercise of that right does not harm anyone else," Zapatero said.