From "Netherlands Forces Homosexual ‘Marriage’ on Aruba" by Gudrun Schultz, posted 04/18/07 at Lifesite.net
The Caribbean island state of Aruba must recognize same-sex marriages performed in the Netherlands, the Dutch Supreme Court ruled April 13, forcing legal recognition of homosexual marriages in the Netherlands Antilles and Aruba, as well as the Netherlands proper.
The case went to the Supreme Court after a municipal official for the civil marriage register in Aruba refused to enter a lesbian couple in the register in 2001, Expatica reported April 13. The Dutch women, Charlene and Esther Oduber-Lamers,
took the case to court, winning first in the lower court and then in the appeals court.
The government of Aruba appealed the case a second time to the Supreme Court, with the support of much of the population--Aruba is 80% Roman Catholic.
“If we accept gay marriage, would we next have to accept Holland's marijuana bars and euthanasia?” said government spokesman Ruben Trapenberg in 2005. “They have their culture, we have ours.”
“We can't let this become a precedent," said Hendrik Croes, a lawyer for Aruba's government. "Gay marriage is against the civil code and Aruban morals."
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