On Friday last Portugal's parliament rejected a proposal to allow gay marriage. A proposal came from the small Left Bloc party along with the Green party to overturn the existing ban.
This was overwhelmingly rejected as the ruling Socialists, who hold a majority, joined the centre-right opposition in opposing the move.
Parliament president Jaime Gaime did not give a final vote breakdown but said the proposal had been rejected and the result appeared on the legislature's television channel.
Some thirty gays staged two mock marriages in protest outside the parliament buildings.
"I am here because there are citizens who are full citizens in their duties but not citizens in their rights and that is a very serious mistake in a democracy," Joana, one of the women who took part in the mock ceremony, told Reuters Television.
"Old homophobes!" a gay protester shouted inside the voting chamber after the vote, before being led out by police.
When the referendum in the country had overturned the ban on abortion, many gays believed that this showed there was a much more progressive attitude.
Even though neighbouring Catholic Spain allowed gay marriages since 2005, Catholic values still hold sway on many social issues in Portugal.
Cardinal Jose Policarpo, the patriarch of Lisbon, warned that allowing gay ‘marriages’ would be a violation of the family.
"What is in question is breaking the profound conception of the family," he said on Radio Renascenca, a Catholic radio station.
Alice Ferreira, a 70-year-old pensioner, summed up the attitudes of many people when she told SIC television that gays could have their own sexual preferences but they should not be allowed to marry.
"I don't think they could be real marriages because marriages are intended to create families," she said.
However, supporters of the change would argue that the ban on gay marriage is in fact a form of sexual discrimination which is banned by Portugal’s 1975 Constitution.
According to Eurobarometer 45 per cent of people in the EU approve of such marriages, while the polls in Portugal give a figure of 30 per cent.
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(Source: CIN)