First Gay Couples
Apply for Marriage
Under New Spanish Law
By RENWICK McLEAN,
NYTimes on the Web, July 5, 2005]
MADRID, July 4 - When Ramón
Vizcaíno and Luis Ibarcena tried to apply for a marriage license here two months
ago, they caused a minor scandal.
Confusing news reports had led them to believe that Spain had legalized gay
marriage, they said, when, in fact, it had only passed a preliminary vote in
Parliament.
"The people there were very surprised to see two men asking about marriage,"
said Mr. Vizcaíno, a 38-year-old security guard. "They looked at us like
we were crazy."
But on Monday, the baffled faces and dismissive tones gave way to smiles and
handshakes, as the men became one of the first gay couples to seek government
authorization to wed under Spain's new marriage law, which took effect on
Sunday.
"This means we are no longer second-class citizens," Mr. Vizcaíno said in an
interview Monday. "We have always had the same obligations as other
citizens. We deserve the same rights, too."
The lines inside the Madrid Civil Registry, where capital residents apply for
marriage licenses, swelled with gay and lesbian couples for the first time on
Monday, four days after Parliament passed a law giving same-sex couples across
Spain the right to marry and to adopt children.
The vote makes Spain the first nation to remove all legal distinctions between
same-sex and heterosexual unions, say advocates for marriage rights for gay
couples. Belgium, Canada and the Netherlands have also legalized gay
marriage, but only Canada's laws, which do not yet apply to all of the country,
contain language as liberal as Spain's.
Near the close of business on Monday, Boti G. Rodrigo, an official at the
registry, said that only four gay couples had formally applied for marriage
licenses but that many more had come seeking information about the process.
"We expect that the number of same-sex couples will be disproportionately high
for weeks, if not months to come," she said.
Ms. Rodrigo said that most of the couples requesting information on Monday had
been together for years.
Parliament's decision to legalize gay marriage has provoked tremendous animosity
among religious conservatives in Spain, a predominantly Roman Catholic country.
In a speech before Pope Benedict XVI in Rome on Monday, the archbishop of
Madrid, Cardinal Antonio María Rouco Varela, condemned the law, saying it was
evidence of a society in which "not only is faith denied, but also human reason
itself."
Ricardo Blázquez, the president of the Conference of Catholic Bishops, also
denounced the law on Monday, saying at a news conference near Madrid that it
"throws moral and human order into confusion."
Many of the gay couples interviewed on Monday said they had grown up in Catholic
households but were no longer practicing Catholics, in part because of the
church's opposition to gay marriage. But Mr. Ibarcena, 32, the partner of
Mr. Vizcaíno and also a security guard, said he still attended church regularly.
"I stand up and challenge them when they say things that are anti-gay," he said.
"I haven't given up on them yet."
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