Anti-Gay Clergy Stir Controversy in Spain

Religious conservatives in Spain were busy this week demonizing gays, as two breaking stories illustrate.

In Galicia, a region of Spain, a Protestant pastor named Marcos Zapata recently presented a seminar on "How to Raise Heterosexual Children," as the U.K. newspaper The Guardian reported (www.guardian.co.uk/spain/article/0,,2232741,00.html).

Zapata is in charge of a group that maintains centers for troubled youth. During the seminar, the pastor reportedly compared homosexuality to alcoholism, saying that is a disease and claiming that therapy can treat it.

Zapata reportedly advised attendees to "hug your sons as much as you can," saying, "if you don't, perhaps another man will."

Zapata's own family values are reinforced by the pastor watching pro wrestling with his sons, the Guardian article said.

On Dec. 27, the article said, the regional government indicated that steps would be taken to ensure the safety of the youth being served by Zapata's organization and its youth centers.

The government said that it would look into whether the youth centers present children with "any type of proselytizing or homophobic attitudes."

Private organizations were also gearing up to take action, with the president of Spain's National Federation of Lesbians, Gays, Trannsexuals, and Bisexuals, Toni Poveda, saying, "After so many legal victories in this country, and for the first time people are talking openly about homosexuality in schools, we have to deal with fundamentalist groups which take us back to the Franco dictatorship," the Guardian article reported.

Continued Poveda, "And of course we are going to try to stop this from happening. Sexual orientation is innate and there's no way to change it."

Meantime, the Catholic Bishop of Teneriffa declared that gays were essentially child molesters, reported several news outlets today, including Big Gay News (biggaynews.com/spanish-bishop-equates-homosexuality-with-child-molestation/1533) and PageOneQ.

Bernardo Alvarez, the bishop for the Canary Isle, said today that, "Homosexuality harms society, and we will pay for it," and also compared gays to drug addicts.

But the youth who are molested sometimes seek out the abuse that they suffer, said Alvarez.

Stated the bishop, "If one isn't careful, they could even provoke it."

Added Alvarez, "Sexuality is more complicated than one suspects."

The Spanish government took sharp exception to Alvarez's claims, as did GLBT groups, reported the story at Big Gay News.

The bishop's office stated after the fact that Alvarez's comments had not been properly understood.