Spain becomes the third country to legalize gay marriage, the other two being Belgium and Netherlands. But the words of the Spanish Prime Minister, Jose Luis Zapatero, seemed especially significant:
'We were not the first, but I am sure we will not be the last. After us will come many other countries, driven, ladies and gentlemen, by two unstoppable forces: freedom and equality.''
Why comment on this? - three reasons come to mind: 1) gay rights is not a "gay" issue, it is a human rights issue and perhaps even a barometer of the enlightenment of a given society; 2) freedom and equality are the twin beacons of American values... but the current administration, with its commitment to the Guantanamo gulag, its subversion of the Geneva Convention (if you are a freedom-loving country, can you really dissolve human rights by inventing a magical category lacking them entirely, e.g. "enemy combatant"), and its torture-by-hire policies, is behaving as if these twin beacons were shattered along with the twin towers; 3) Europe, stodgy and aristocratic, generally lagging behind, seems now to be picking up the torch. If we are only humble enough to recognize the example and follow.
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