In Portugal, Priest “Doing” Comatose Women Makes Bigger News Than Gay Marriage

Portugal's Newlyweds

In Portugal, today for the first time, same-sex couples could legally get married.  After catching the first bits about Helena Paixão and Teresa Pires becoming the first couple to take advantage of Portugal’s new law, I decided to check out what Portuguese newspapers were saying.

But when I clicked over to Jornal de Notícias, the lead story wasn’t about the new same-sex weddings or any protest about them.  In fact, the article about Helena and Teresa’s wedding said that aside from some reporters, there was little other fanfare and no protests unlike when its Iberian neighbor Spain first legalized gay marriage in 2005.

What was the lead article of this Lisbon newspaper?  The story coming out of Belgium told about letters from a now deceased Catholic priest who had raped women in comas in an intensive care hospital when he was supposed to have been tending to the spiritual needs of their families.

With so much scandal surrounding Benedict and the church, it’s no wonder that most Portuguese are giving the new weddings a “could-care-less” attitude, even though the pope called gay marriage “insiduous and dangerous” when he visited the Catholic country less than a month ago.

Maybe the pope should be afraid of going the way of St. Christopher.  I mean how many of those dashboard Jesuses do you see around these days?

Portugal Becomes 6th European Country To Approve Same-sex Marriage

Kissing in celebration in front of the Portuguese Parliament Building

Pope Benedict will probably have to go out and buy another pair of Prada shoes to console himself because today one more of the old Catholic strongholds, Portugal, gave the approval to same-sex marriage.

According to Lisbon’s Diario de Noticias and Madrid’s abc.es (I needed the back-up of Spanish to translate), the Portuguese Parliament voted to give the go ahead for legalizing gay marriage.  Portugal now joins its Iberian neighbor Spain,  where same-sex weddings have been legal since 2005.  Four other European countries allow gay marriage: Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden.

Said Prime Minister José Sócrates, “This is an historic moment for the Assembly of the Republic, and I am happy to have participated in it.”

It’s interesting to note that both Portugal and Spain were both governed by right-wing dictators well into the 1970s and a mere 30 some years later both have come this far in working to eliminate discrimination.