The lowest House of the Spanish Parliament has approved the new Socialist government’s gay marriage bill on Thursday 21st April 2005. This marks a major stepping stone towards making Spain – a country traditionally thought of as strict Roman Catholic – just the third European country to legalise same-sex marriages.

The bill has also proposed legalisation for gay couples to adopt children, and the new development will enable the bill to move up the ladder to the final stage in the coming weeks – Spain’s Senate.

It is expected that the bill will not have much resistance to pass there either, as the Socialists have even more supporters there. The lower house passed the bill by a 183-136 vote, with six abstaining.

The passing of the bill confirms powerfully the radical change that the nation is going through. For centuries Spain has been a stronghold for the Catholic Church, but since the new government was elected following the Madrid bombings last year – new Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez has gone about making huge changes to the nation’s strict Catholic ideals.

According to Madrid's Cardinal Antonio Maria Rouco Varela, 80% of Spaniards confess themselves as Catholic, however, half ignore the Vatican’s teachings, and religion for a majority is more an inherited tag than a way of life.

A recent poll revealed the shocking statistics that nearly half of Spain’s Roman Catholics almost never attend Mass, and another third of these "Roman Catholics" simply stated that they were not religious.

Spain's top judicial authority has said in a non-binding ruling that gay marriage is unconstitutional, which could encourage a legal challenge, and since the bill was proposed it has met huge opposition from the Catholic Church and evangelicals, as well as the conservative opposition Popular Party.

Senior churchmen have criticised Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero's agenda of secularisation, which has also included easing abortion restrictions and permitting stem cell research

The Spanish Bishops Conference previously released a statement stating that the bill "went against the common good. (It is) unfair that real marriage should be treated the same as the union of persons of the same sex."

In addition last year, the spokesperson for the conference spoke strongly against homosexual marriages, saying it was like "imposing a virus on society, something false that will have negative consequences for social life."

However, the Roman Catholic Church is far from standing alone in its opposition to the secularisation of Spain. Jewish, Protestant and Orthodox faiths have also expressed their absolute opposition to the bill. In particular it was articulated by all that the recognition of other types of unions between couples should not alter the institution of matrimony.

The move is likely to have reignited conflicts with the Roman Catholic Church, who only this week elected a new Pope – Benedict XVI – as successor to Pope John Paul II. Former Pope John Paul warned Spanish bishops in January that an increasingly secular-minded Spain was moving toward "restriction of religious freedom and even promoting disdain or ignorance of religion."

If the bill continues and passes through the Spanish Senate – then Spain will join Belgium and Netherlands as the only countries in Europe that have legalised gay marriage.