The Associated Press is reporting that Portugal’s conservative President Anibal Cavaco Silva has said he will sign a bill legalizing same-sex marriage in that country, and some sources are saying the bill has been signed.
Silva’s signature brings to eight the number of countries that have legalized same-sex marriage, plus Mexico City, Washington, D.C. and five U.S. states (Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Iowa and Vermont).
According to AP, Silva said he was “setting aside personal convictions” to sign the bill into law, but that he knows if he vetoed it, it would go back to Parliament where lawmakers would vote to override the veto.
He said: “”Given that fact, I feel I should not contribute to a pointless extension of this debate, which would only serve to deepen the divisions between the Portuguese and divert the attention of politicians away from the grave problems affecting us.”
Read the AP story here for more information.
3 Comments
Kudos to President Silva.
I wish our politicians would grow a pair .
To those of you using the Bible as a weapon against homosexuality, you are wrong. Homosexuality is not a sin. The Bible is constantly being taken out of context to support anti-gay views. Scholars who have studied the Bible in context of the times and in relation to other passages have shown those passages (Leviticus, Corinthians, Romans, etc) have nothing to do with homosexuality. These passages often cherry-picked while ignoring the rest of the Bible. The sins theses passages are referring to are idolatry, Greek temple sex worship, prostitution, pederasty with teen boys, and rape, not homosexuality or two loving consenting adults.
https://www.soulfoodministry.org/docs/English/NotASin.htm
https://www.jesus21.com/content/sex/bible_homosexuality_print.html
https://www.christchapel.com/reclaiming.html
https://www.stjohnsmcc.org/new/BibleAbuse/BiblicalReferences.php
https://www.gaychristian101.com/
Thats why Jesus never mentions it as well. There is nothing immoral, wrong, or sinful about being gay. Jesus, however, clearly states he HATES hypocrites. If you preach goodness, then promote hate and twist the words of the Bible, you are a hypocrite, and will be judged and sent to hell. Homosexuals will not go to hell, hypocrites will.
This is very similar to the religious bigots of the past, where they took Bible passages to condone slavery, keep women down, and used Bible passages to claim blacks as curses who should be enslaved by the white man. People used God to claim that blacks marrying whites was unnatural, and not of God’s will.
The above article is very well said and it should be appreciated by all readers.
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Jack Barret
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