Teresa Pires and Helena Paixao, divorced Portuguese mothers in their 30s who have been together since 2003, married in a 15-minute ceremony at a Lisbon registry office.I generally think it is a good idea for parents of minor children to refrain from bringing new partners into the lives of those children – regardless of the sex of the new partner. Wait until the kids are raised. They already have broken homes. They don't need new competition for your affections, or more chaos, or bonding with a new "parent" who may not stay.
"Now we're a family, that's the important thing," Pires said, adding they would continue to fight for equal rights for homosexuals, including adoption.Interesting. So they weren't a family before? That's not what a lot of LGBTQQUIA??? activists and shacking-up advocates have said before. Does Pires take the position that conservative family groups do – that people are only family through marriage, formal adoption, and birth?
The ceremony came less than a month after Portugal's conservative president ratified a gay marriage law passed by Parliament in January. His approval made Portugal the sixth in Europe to let same-sex couples wed."Let" probably isn't the right word. How many of the other European countries actively prosecute same-sex couples for having ceremonies? Perhaps the ones with significant Muslim populations? "Government designition as marriage" is more accurate.
How's the Muslim population there these days?Pires and Paixao, the lesbian couple, had campaigned for a change in the law since a registry office turned them away when they first tried to marry in 2006.
Officials argued the law stipulated that marriage was between people of different sexes. The women appealed to Portugal's Constitutional Court because the constitution forbids discrimination based on sexual orientation.
The court rejected their appeal, but left-of-center parties in Parliament supported the government bill which removed the reference to marriage being between different sexes.
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