Is it really possible to refuse enforcing a law on the grounds of conscience? Does a legislation approved by the government have no binding force?

And Cardinal Ricard Maria Carles' comparison in the last paragraph is the most outrageous thing I've ever heard from a member of the church, and church representatives do say the most stupid things.


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http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20 ... -4696r.htm

Spanish mayor rejects gay 'weddings'

By Estelle Shirbon
REUTERS NEWS AGENCY

MADRID -- A Spanish mayor has announced that he will refuse to apply a new law allowing same-sex couples to "marry," a stand likely to please the Roman Catholic Church but give the Socialist government a headache.

The Spanish parliament last week gave initial approval to the new law -- to the outrage of church authorities who have labeled homosexual "marriage" harmful to society and have urged mayors not to perform same-sex "weddings."

"I intend not to exercise this right [to marry same-sex couples] and not to delegate it to other municipal officials," Valladolid Mayor Francisco Javier Leon de la Riva was quoted as saying in local newspapers Tuesday.

"If the law forces me [to marry homosexual couples], I shall object on the grounds of conscience," said Mr. Leon de la Riva, of the center-right Popular Party, which is considered close to the Catholic Church.

Other mayors appeared poised to follow Mr. Leon de la Riva's lead, and his counterpart in Avila, Miguel Angel Garcia Nieto, which is also in central Spain, praised him for his "manly stand."

Lluis Fernando Caldentey, mayor of Pontons in the Catalonia region, said that same-sex "marriage" was immoral and that homosexuals were "defective." The Popular Party said it had suspended him from the party for his comments.

Madrid Municipal Council member Ana Botella, wife of former Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, last week joined the civic leaders who refuse to conduct same-sex "marriage," Agence France-Presse reported.

But many conservative mayors of big cities, among them Alberto Ruiz Gallardon of Madrid and Rita Barbera of Valencia, said they would respect the law.

The Socialist government said it expected everyone, especially public officials, to comply with the law that allows same-sex couples to "wed" in civil ceremonies, not in church.

The law "does not affect freedom of conscience, nor does it have anything to do with religion or with a religious sacrament," said Justice Minister Juan Fernando Lopez Aguilar.

The Socialist government repeatedly has angered the church in its first year in power, not just with its homosexual "marriage" plans but also by easing abortion restrictions, making it easier to divorce and permitting stem-cell research.

Opinion polls show that most Spaniards support allowing same-sex couples to "marry," but the measure has come under sustained fire from the church and from the conservative Popular Party.

Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, head of the Vatican's Pontifical Council for the Family, branded the law "inhuman" and challenged state officials to refuse to apply it.

Pope John Paul II last year rebuked Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero over the plan to legalize homosexual "marriage."

Yesterday, homosexual rights groups reacted with fury after a Spanish cardinal compared obedience to laws on same-sex "marriage" to the process that led to the creation of Nazi death camps.

"If you give obedience to the law priority over obedience to your conscience, that leads to Auschwitz," Cardinal Ricard Maria Carles, former archbishop of Barcelona, told a Spanish television station.

When the mayor of San Francisco did exactly the opposite last year, the Supreme Court ruled that he had exceeded his authority and ordered that he stop issuing marriage licenses to gay couples. I don't know what the system of judicial review is like in Spain, but it's likely something similar could happen. If he were to continue to refuse, in America at least, he could be held in contempt of court and fined or jailed.

The Government has stated clearly as water: Every public employee who refuses to apply the law will lose his job. I don't have any objection, if they want to object in the grounds of conscience, I think they will keep on doin' it to the last consequences, won't they? But I don't know what would happen with a public official democratically elected...

I wonder why objecting is OK now and it wasn't OK when young men tried to object to the army for the same reasons (conscience) and were jailed for years... is it worst to be homosexual than to kill people in a war?

Fuckin' hypocrites...

And I'm refraining from commenting the bishop's words. His ears are not ready to receive the amount of cursed words I'd deliver...

In Portugal, before the Revolution of 74, when the colonies were fighting for their independence, those who were against the war could also not object for grounds of conscience, they would either go to war or go to other countries, mainly to France and England.

And please don't refrain from commenting the bishop's words.

OK...

He's the only one Nazi cabrón motherfucker bastard asshole that's involved in all this story... I shit on his fuckin' teeth for saying such a barbarity. I think that Inquisition (don't know if it's said that way in English) commited waaay much worse crimes than nazis and all over the centuries. Nazis, of course, are disgusting and we have to fight to make them disappear, but Catholic Church could be even worst than that and it's way much harder to fight against. And for last, nobody in the Catholic Church made any hard statement against Nazis, or ar least as hard as they're throwing now through their disgusting shitty mouths against gay marriage. Go fuck yourselves, stop complaining 'bout he straws in the others' eyes and focus your efforts on the beam in yours (priests abusing children, for instance, or acumulating riches while half of the world is starving violating your own master's instructions)

I DO hate Catholic Church Hierarchy... motherfuckin' hypocrites...

I'm just curious, how does the Inquistion compare against the atrocities the Nazis did? Does this include the conquistadores of Latin America?

Dude, I swear, Nazis were kind of apprentices compared with Inquisition. I was once in a Inquisition museum (This one: http://servicios.eldiariomontanes.es/pa ... s/mus3.htm it's in Spanish) that showed all the torturing devices that they used and I went out of there sick as hell. And of course, all of this include the conquistadores, they did terrible things all across South America, nothing compared with, for instance, the conquest of north america, at least north american conquerors "only" killed indians. Spanish (Spaniard) conquerors tortured the natives, raped their women and did awful things... and all in the name of spreading catholic religion... I sometimes feel terribly ashamed of having such a terrible ancestors...

Pretty damn awful. Thanks for the link, I don't know a whole lot about this time period.

See, don't you feel better now?