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Over in Portugal, the government, on December 17, approved proposed legislation to remove references to gender in respect of marriage.

You know Portugal: extreme western European country (snap!); with the Catholic conservatism (snap!); and the economy that didn’t really feel much of a boom over the past couple of decades before the bottom fell out of, well, everything (hm, that’s where Ireland and Portugal differ slightly).

Yep, that Portugal looks set to soon remove any prohibitions on same-sex marriage. (The Irish equivalent of the prohibition would be contained in s.2(2)(e) of the Civil Registration Act 2004; some commentators argue that the Constitution also prohibits it, but that’s a matter of some academic debate so far.)

The socialist government of José Sócrates (fabulous name) apparently has the support of all of the other left-leaning parties in parliament. If so, that will give the bill majority support in parliament. The bill may then be either signed into law by Portugal’s president, vetoed by him, or referred by him to the Constitutional Court.

Objections to the bill come from the opposition, which includes conservative politicians, who say that an alternative “civil unions” type bill should be proposed instead, which affords “some rights” to the gays. Sound familiar? (The Roman Catholic church are also opposed, of course. As always, the Vatican believes it has the right to interfere in the secular affairs of State in other countries.)

Other criticism comes from some – including the Left Bloc (Bloco Esquerda), ILGA-Europe’s Portugal office, and activist group the Pink Panthers (Panteras Rosa) – who say that the government’s proposed law does not go far enough, and that excluding same-sex couples from adoption simply enshrines further discrimination. It’s a fair comment, given the laws put in place over the border in (also Catholic conservative) Spain by the socialist government of that nation.The Portuguese cabinet’s proposed law is to be submitted to the parliament in January 2010. It will be interesting to see if yet another country – including a number of our EU neighbours – will over-take 21st century, “smart economy,” “mod-ren” Ireland.