Spain's Queen Objects to Gay Marriage

A new book about Spain's Queen Sofia has caused an uproar among gays and lesbians because of the monarch's sniffy opinions regarding pride parades and gay marriage.
Leaks from her new biography, The Queen Up Close, appeared in the newspaper El País on Thursday, and the normally reticent queen surprised many people by opening her mouth about political matters.
She says she doesn't understand gay-pride parades."I can understand, accept and respect that there are people of other sexual tendencies, but should they be proud to be gay?" she says in the book by journalist Pilar Urbano, which is officially published on Sunday, her 70th birthday. "Should they ride on a parade float and come out in protests? If all of those who aren't gay came out to protest we would halt traffic."
She also objected to the term "gay marriage," although the Spanish parliament legalized same-sex marriages in 2005.
"If those people want to live together, dress up like bride and groom and marry, they could have a right to do so, or not, depending on the law of their country," she said, "but they should not call this matrimony, because it isn't. There are many possible names: social contract, social union."
Antonio Poveda, head of a rights group called FELGTB (the State Federation of Lesbians, Gays, Transsexuals and Bisexuals of Spain), expressed "tremendous surprise" at the queen's opinions. "It is unprecedented that the palace, which usually never comments on social issues, now has to vent about one group of citizens who have been discriminated against in the past," he said in a statement.