{"id":8,"date":"2006-09-16T10:36:14","date_gmt":"2006-09-16T17:36:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.herek.net\/blog\/2006\/09\/16\/wedding-bells-in-the-spanish-air-force\/"},"modified":"2007-06-25T08:59:55","modified_gmt":"2007-06-25T16:59:55","slug":"spanish-wedding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/herek.net\/blog\/spanish-wedding\/","title":{"rendered":"Wedding Bells in the Spanish Air Force"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday marked an historic milestone in Spain. Two male soldiers were married in a civil ceremony presided over by the mayor of Seville. According to the <a href=\"http:\/\/365gay.com\/Newscon06\/09\/091506spain.htm\" target=\"blog\">Associated Press<\/a>, &#8220;the Defense Ministry has said it considers the wedding a personal matter and the men will be allowed to continue with their careers.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The Spanish military&#8217;s response makes sense. As documented in several reports by the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gaymilitary.ucsb.edu\/Publications\/british_pub1.htm\" target=\"blog\">Center for the Study of Sexual Minorities in the Military<\/a> at UC Santa Barbara, openly gay and lesbian personnel have been successfully integrated into the militaries of England, Canada, Australia, and other countries without major problems. Similar conclusions were reached in a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rand.org\/pubs\/research_briefs\/RB7537\/index1.html\" target=\"blog\">1993 study by the RAND Corporation<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The wedding in Spain is a reminder that a national government can successfully grant equal marriage rights and allow sexual minorities to serve in its armed forces if it chooses to do so. The 4500 same-sex couples who have wed in Spain during the past year don&#8217;t pose a threat to the marriages of heterosexual Spaniards, And although some of the newly wedded soldiers&#8217; comrades in arms might not like the fact that they&#8217;re married (or gay), their personal disapproval won&#8217;t make the Spanish military less able to accomplish its mission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday marked an historic milestone in Spain. Two male soldiers were married in a civil ceremony presided over by the mayor of Seville. According to the Associated Press, &#8220;the Defense Ministry has said it considers the wedding a personal matter and the men will be allowed to continue with their careers.&#8221; The Spanish military&#8217;s response [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dont-ask-dont-tell","category-marriage-equality"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/herek.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/herek.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/herek.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/herek.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/herek.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/herek.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/herek.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/herek.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/herek.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}