Spanish lessons

Last fall a Catholic priest invited me to my very first same-sex wedding. I was thrilled. The wedding was between an Episcopal deacon and his long-term boyfriend. The rites were Christian with the priest presiding. Sound unorthodox? What if I told you the priest was openly gay? And sexually active? And that he identifies as a bear?

¡Hola y bienvenidos! to gay Spain, where the citizens have been struggling to reconcile their country’s Christian underpinnings with a liberal attitude toward gay rights ever since same-sex marriage became legal over a year ago. On June 30, 2005, you were probably as surprised as I was when the Spanish government under President José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, a Socialist, granted equal marriage rights to gays. After all, the country has a long Roman Catholic tradition, with 80% of its people at least nominally a Friend of Benedict, and homosexuality itself became legal only in 1978. And hello, Spanish Inquisition, anyone?

Yet somehow Spain beat the United States to the altar and allowed all its citizens to marry—which as of late 2006 included more than 4,000 gay couples. Nowadays marriage equality has dropped from the headlines (two thirds of voters supported it anyway). In the capital city of Madrid, one in 10 marriages are between members of the same sex. The city’s mayor, a member of the right-wing People’s Party, even performed the nuptials of one of his gay deputies.

Confusing? I certainly thought so. So in September I did what any young gay journalist with a temporary lease (and no romantic prospects) would do: I moved to Spain to figure it out.

On the surface Spain is exactly the country you expect it to be. The people have a strong cultural bond with Catholicism, and their festivals explode with as much color and vigor as ever. During Holy Week, men still parade down the streets in brilliantly colored robes and those tall slightly creepy fabric hoods. On feast days, spectacularly bejeweled icons of the Virgin Mary are carried through the streets, and in Europe, Spain’s celebrations before Lent are surpassed only by Italy’s. During the Christmas season, as I am writing this story, Madrid’s wide boulevards have turned into festivals of lights, mangers, and crushes of humanity.

But I learned that underneath this facade lies a much more complicated relationship between religion, politics, and society. All the color and ceremony is what some call “Catholicism of rhythm.” That is, people celebrate because they always have, not out of a religious obligation. Since marriage between members of the same sex was legalized, Pope Benedict XVI has railed repeatedly against the Spanish government. Same-sex “pseudomarriage,” based on “a love that is weak,” is the “greatest threat ever” that the church has faced, he has said on various occasions. But his remarks fall largely on deaf ears. Spaniards remember all too well what happened the last time they allowed the Catholic Church to order them around.