The gay rights group Queer Kissing
Flashmob staged a kiss-in protest against Pope Benedict XVI on
Sunday.
About 200 gay men, lesbians and allies
embraced as the Holy Father was being driven to celebrate mass at
Barcelona's La Sagrada Familia (Holy Family) basilica. But the
protest appeared to be drowned out by thousands of cheering,
flag-waving supporters of the pontiff.
Before the protest, Carole Marylene, an
organizer of the event, told Spanish news agency EFE: “It is
curious to note how an act so noble as a kiss can be considered
revolutionary, even in the twenty-first century.”
During the mass, Benedict attacked
Spain's 2005 law legalizing gay marriage.
“The generous, indissoluble love of a
man and a woman is the effective context and the foundation of human
life in its gestation in the birth and growth and its natural end,”
the pope said.
Last month, the
pontiff had harsher words for the institution, saying gay marriage
leads to confusion of society's values.
The law has become an issue in the
contest to elect Spain's next prime minister in early 2012. Mariano
Rajoy, the president of the country's Partido Popular, recently said
he believes the law is unconstitutional, prompting gay rights
activists to call him and his party “homophobic.”