SPAIN: A controversial law that would give gay and lesbian couples the same right to marry, divorce and adopt children as heterosexuals was approved yesterday by Spain's Socialist government.
The draft legislation, which now goes to parliament, has brought a furious reaction from the Roman Catholic Church, which warned that it risks "introducing a virus into society".
However, polls show the move enjoys firm support from the country's increasingly liberal population.
The law will make traditionally Catholic Spain only the third country in the world to legalise gay marriage after the Netherlands and Belgium.
Some other nations have provisions for recognising committed same-sex unions.
No such provisions exist in Irish law, although a Law Reform Commission report recommending property and inheritance rights be changed to take account of gay relationships is being studied by the Government. Spain's decision was announced yesterday by the Deputy Prime Minister, Ms Maria Teresa Fernandez de la Vega. "We are putting an end to centuries of discrimination . . . Spain is now in the vanguard of Europe and the world in fighting this discrimination," she told a news conference.
The minority Socialist government is almost certain of getting the bill through parliament with support from small groups, gay activists say.
Even the main centre-right opposition party has said it supports legalising some form of gay unions, although it does not believe they should be the same as heterosexual marriages.
Activists say the government made a pioneering choice in opting to change Spain's existing civil code to cover gay couples, rather than creating a separate law to govern same-sex unions, which could have led to more subtle discrimination.
Particularly important to many couples, but among the most controversial implications of the law, is the right to adoption.
"There are already thousands of children in Spain who live with homosexual parents . . . More than 50 studies agree that there are no differences among children who grow up in homes with homosexual parents," Ms Fernandez de la Vega said.
The Prime Minister, Mr Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, made legalising gay marriage a key pledge in campaigns for March elections, when he won a surprise victory over the ruling centre-right party in the wake of bombs in Madrid that killed 191.
It is part of a raft of liberal measures, including streamlined divorce and permitting embryo research, that the church is battling, saying they threaten the moral foundations of Spanish society.