When Carlos and Emilio were married in Madrid last July, it marked the end of their 30-year courtship.
The two men met in a Madrid café in February 1975 when Spain was still ruled by the dictator General Francisco Franco and homosexuals were imprisoned under the Law on Social Dangers.
‘Back then it was scandalous, but we still moved in together,’ a beaming Emilio told reporters after Spain’s first gay marriage.
Emilio’s mother used to pray for him to change his sexuality. ‘Now she’s buying us a cruise.’
Almost a year into marriage, Carlos and Emilio are still going strong.
‘What makes you feel closer is people’s reaction,’ says Carlos. ‘Now they associate you, put you together. Even though we have been together for 30 years, in the eyes of the law we used to be just room-mates.’
For Emilio, getting married was about more than mere legal recognition of their rights. ‘I’ve noticed a big difference with my mother and siblings,’ he says. ‘Now they talk about family issues with both of us.’
Like an old married couple, they even finish each other’s sentences.
‘It’s not that we used to fight a lot,’ begins Emilio. ‘But now we never fight,’ concludes Carlos.
The ease with which these most celebrated of newlyweds have settled into married life belies the fact that their union marked something of a social revolution in this once staunchly Catholic country.
Despite polls showing that two-thirds of Spaniards supported the reforms, the legalisation of gay marriage—only Canada has gone as far in extending full legal equality to homosexual unions—prompted a conservative backlash that raised the political temperature across Spain.
The Catholic Church not only opposed the new laws, but did so with a vehemence that alienated many Spaniards.
Before the law was passed, Juan Antonio Martinez Camino, the vocal spokesman for the powerful Spanish Bishops’ Conference, said that legalising gay marriage was akin to ‘imposing a virus on society’ and was the biggest challenge faced by the Church in 2000 years.
During parliamentary hearings into the legislation, Aquilino Polaino, a psychiatry professor from Madrid’s Catholic University, appeared before the Senate’s Justice Committee at the request of the main opposition Popular Party and testified that homosexuality was ‘a disease’ that ‘can be corrected by therapy’. This ‘disease’, he assured senators, was caused by ‘a hostile, distant, alcoholic or violent father’ and ‘an overprotective, cold and demanding mother’. Homosexuals, he concluded, ‘did not play games as children, may have suffered sexual