Carlos Baturin & Emilio Menendez

[reviews_and_ramblings]

Same-sex marriage was legalized in Spain in 2005, by law 13/2005. The first legal same-sex marriage in Spain took place on 11 July of that year, in Tres Cantos, Madrid, between Emilio Menendez and Carlos Baturin, who had lived as a couple for more than thirty years. The first marriage of two women under the law was 11 days later, in Barcelona.

The ceremony took place in Tres Cantos, a town outside Madrid, eight days after Spain became the third country in the world to grant full legal recognition to same-sex couples.

Spanish television showed the couple laughing and displaying their wedding rings after the ceremony at the town hall in Tres Cantos.

Pedro Zerolo, at the time the ruling Socialist party's top official for social issues, attended the wedding. The new law gives gay couples the same rights as heterosexual ones. Besides getting married, they can adopt children and inherit each other's property.

The justice ministry estimated that about 10% of Spain's 43 million people are homosexual.


Same-sex marriage was legalized in Spain in 2005. The first legal same-sex marriage in Spain took place on 11 July of that year, between Emilio Menendez and Carlos Baturin, who had lived as a couple for more than thirty years. The first marriage of two women under the law was 11 days later, in Barcelona. The ceremony took place in Tres Cantos, a town outside Madrid, eight days after Spain became the third country in the world to grant full legal recognition to same-sex couples.





Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/jul/12/spain.gayrights

Further Readings:

Gay Marriage: for Better or for Worse?: What We've Learned from the Evidence by William N. Eskridge and Darren R. Spedale
Publisher Oxford University Press, USA (June 18, 2006)
Language English
ISBN-10 0195187512
ISBN-13 978-0195187519
Amazon: Gay Marriage: for Better or for Worse?: What We've Learned from the Evidence

Opponents of same-sex marriage in the United States often claim that allowing gays and lesbians to marry will lead to the downfall of the institution of marriage and will harm children. Drawing from 16 years of data and experience with same-sex unions in Scandinavia, Gay Marriage: For Better or for Worse? is the first book to present empirical evidence about the results of same-sex marriage (in the form of registered partnerships) from the Nordic countries. Spedale and Eskridge demonstrate that conservative defense-of-marriage arguments that predict negative effects from gay marriage are invalid, and the Scandinavian experience suggests that the institution of marriage may indeed benefit from the enactment of gay marriage. If we look at the proof from abroad, the authors argue, we must conclude that the sanctioning of gay marriage in the United States would neither undermine marriage as an institution, nor harm the wellbeing of our nation's children.

More Real Life Romances at my website: http://www.elisarolle.com/, My Ramblings/Real Life Romance