The Gays In Spain Complain They Must Refrain—Or Why Madrid’s Anti-Pope Kiss-In Fizzled

Spanish might be a romance language, but Spanish police nixed Thursday’s planned kiss-in set to coincide with Pope Benedict XVI’s arrival in the heavily Catholic country.

Though some 100 gays and lesbians had planned the civil action along Madrid’s Calle Serrano to protest the Pope’s hard line against homosexuality, authorities blocked protesters less than a kilometer from their meet-up spot and forced them to disperse. Big Papa is in the Spanish metropolis as part of a four-day celebration of World Youth Day.

The queer protest had been organized on Facebook by a group defending LGBT rights, said activist/performance artist, Jaime del Val. A  similar smooch-fest successfully greeted the Pontiff when he came to Barcelona last November.

Unmolested by smooching sodomites, the Pope spoke to a group of nuns about threats to the religion:

“This is all the more important today when we see a certain ‘eclipse of God’ taking place, a kind of amnesia which, albeit not an outright rejection of Christianity, is nonetheless a denial of the treasure of our faith, a denial that could lead to the loss of our deepest identity.”

Treasure of the faith—like the ghastly Spanish Inquisition, held in the very same town some 500 years ago?

BTW: If any cute Spaniards still want to kiss another guy in public, we’re totally available.

 

Image via Sergey Gabdurakhmanov

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