Highest court: homosexual ‘marriage’ is constitutional

by Matthew Cullinan Hoffman

November 8, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Spain’s highest court, the Constitutional Tribunal, has ruled that homosexual “marriage” is not prohibited by the Constitution, Spanish news agencies are reporting.

The decision comes in response to a lawsuit initiated in 2005 by the then-opposition People’s Party (PP), which now controls the government, against a law establishing homosexual “marriage” passed by the then-ruling Spanish Socialist Worker’s Party and its allies. The law also permits “married” homosexual couples to adopt children.

The basis of the suit was Article 32 of the Spanish Constitution, which states that “men and women have the right to contract matrimony with full juridical equality,” implying that marriage is exclusively between a man and a woman.

The ruling establishes Spain as one of the only two historically Catholic countries in Europe - Portugal is the other - to treat homosexual unions as “marriages” and to permit such couples to adopt children. All other European countries that have approved such marriages, which include the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Belgium, Denmark, and Iceland, are in the historically Protestant north.

The Spanish newspaper El Mundo reports that, according to sources within the Tribunal, the decision does not establish homosexual “marriage” as a constitutional right, but merely regards it as an optional form of legislation that falls under the purview of the Spanish Parliament. The text of the decision has not yet been released to the public.

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Although the conservative People’s Party would have the right to repeal the law under the ruling, Spain’s Minister of Justice, Alberto Ruiz-Gallardón, has told the press that the government will obey the ruling and will not attempt a repeal.

Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, whose commitment to life and family values has often been questioned by the country’s pro-life movement, commented that his party’s only concern in the lawsuit was the application of the word “matrimony” to homosexual couples, and not the legal rights attached to it, which “are unimportant to us.”

Following the pattern in other countries, few homosexuals have availed themselves of the legal right to “marry” under the existing law. Statistics show that active homosexuals tend to be highly promiscuous and their relationships of short duration. From 2005-2011, only 21,124 homosexual “marriages” have occurred in the country, according to government statistics.