Following the Spanish Parliament's approval of a bill allowing same-sex couples to marry and adopt children, a major Catholic organization demanded that the government let the Spanish people vote on the matter.

The bill cleared its last legislative hurdle June 30, when lawmakers passed it into law in a 187-147 vote.

The new law makes traditionally Catholic Spain the third country to legalize gay marriage after the Netherlands and Belgium. On June 28, Canada's Parliament approved a same-sex marriage bill, which the Canadian Senate is expected to pass into law quickly.

Benigno Blanco, a founding member of the Spanish Forum for the Family, told Catholic News Service that the group will continue to put pressure on the government to hold a referendum.

"The majority of Spanish families are in favor of the position of the forum, and against a law that was passed because of the influence of a minority," he said.

The Spanish Forum for the Family, an umbrella group of predominantly Catholic organizations, assembled more than 500,000 demonstrators against the bill on gay marriage in central Madrid June 18. The group demonstrated again in the Spanish capital after the bill was passed.

The Spanish bishops' conference described the new law as "radically unjust." The bishops said in a June 30 statement that the law fails to recognize "the social and anthropological reality" of marriage between a man and a woman.

Heterosexual marriage, the bishops said, provides society with "values that cannot be substituted by anything else: personal fulfillment of two people, together with the procreation and education of children." The statement also called on Spaniards "to oppose this unjust law by legitimate means."

Spain's upper house of Parliament rejected the bill June 22. However, the final say in Spain's legislative process rests with the Congress of Deputies, where, as expected, the ruling Socialists defeated the opposition Conservatives, who had voted against the bill.

Shortly before lawmakers voted, Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero told Parliament that "this law ... poses no threat to matrimony or the family."

Under the new law, Spain's civil code has been modified to allow marriage between partners "whether of the same or different sex."

Several Spanish mayors have already said they cannot in conscience marry same-sex couples, despite warnings by the government they may lose their jobs if they refuse.

In April, Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, president of the Pontifical Council for the Family, suggested that Spanish civil servants should conscientiously object to playing a role in such marriage ceremonies, even if they are fired as a result.

From Rome, Cardinal Lopez repeated this call following news of the parliamentary approval, saying the law was a "serious threat to the family and life," Agence France-Presse reported.

Blanco said the Zapatero government has "consistently refused" to meet with the forum to discuss its central demand for a referendum.

"Nuclear families are an important majority in Spain ... while gay and lesbian groups are a minority. We must be listened to as well.... We will keep trying to persuade them of the importance of putting this matter to the Spanish people," he said.

Blanco also said that the organization is demanding a mechanism that parents, in case of their death, can opt for their children not to be adopted by homosexual couples. "This is something that worries many Spanish families," Blanco said.

Spain's Conservative opposition, meanwhile, appears to have responded to a request by the forum to appeal against the law in Spain's constitutional tribunal.

Conservative leader Mariano Rajoy said his party will examine the law "to decide whether to present an appeal against the law on the grounds of it being unconstitutional."

He said the Zapatero government was acting irresponsibly by failing to look for a greater consensus in Spanish society.

According to a survey by Spain's state pollsters last summer, 66 percent of Spaniards are in favor of gay couples being given the same rights as heterosexual married couples. However, only 21 percent are "firmly in agreement" with the right of gay couples to adopt children.

Meanwhile, June 30-July 1 edition of the Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, called recent government measures in Spain and Canada legalizing same-sex marriage "violent attacks aimed at the natural family --- based on a union between a man and a woman." The newspaper said the heavily debated government proposals equating same-sex unions with marriage between a man and a woman were objectionable.

In largely Catholic Spain, the Parliament also approved measures to speed up divorce proceedings, reducing the waiting time before a divorce is granted from at least a year to between three and six months.

The head of the Spanish bishops' family and life commission, Bishop Juan-Antonio Reig Pla of Segorbe-Castellon de la Plana, disputed national poll results that suggested the new laws were popular with most Spaniards.

"Sociological surveys of the people are all under the control of a government" that is pushing its agenda of easing the nation's divorce and abortion laws, he said in a June 30 interview with Vatican Radio.

He said "the beauty of marriage" between a man and a woman has been lost in an environment of "anarchic freedom" which has led people to choose whatever sexual orientation they desire.

---CNS