Despite threats, intimidation, and the possibility of a jail sentence, Judge Fernando Ferrin Calamita is unapologetically defending his refusal to approve the adoption of a Spanish child by the lesbian lover of the child’s mother.
In an interview with the Spanish newspaper El Mundo, Calmita says that he has received “pressure, and even blackmail and extortion” from Jose Luis Mazon, the prosecutor who is seeking to send him to jail for three years, despite the fact that he has not “committed any crime.” He also says that he has suffered “pressure” from repeated phone calls.
According to Calamita’s lawyer, the tactics being used against his client are nothing new in socialist Spain.
“The same thing has happened to my client that happened to the judge in Denia who put up barriers to a homosexual marriage, that is to say, an act of harassment so that no magistrate would dare to argue about the star laws of the Government,” wrote Jose Antonio Mendez in an article for Alpha and Omega magazine.
“Don Fernando Ferrin Calamita is uncomfortable for them, bothers them, and annoys them, and by punishing him they intend to warn the rest of the judges, to teach them an exemplary lesson about what can happen to a judge who raises questions about the unconstitutionality of a law like the one regarding homosexual marriage,” he added.
As LifeSiteNews reported recently, Calamita is accused of obstructing the adoption after months of delays in the trial, which the judge says was due to his insistence on receiving a psychological assessment of the likely impact of the adoption of the child by a lesbian. He says the report never came, even after repeated requests. He was also waiting for an opinion from the nation’s Supreme Court on the constitutionality of same-sex adoption (see coverage at http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/nov/08112702.html).
Calamita acknowledges that the homosexuality of the adoptive parent was what led him to question the “appropriateness” of the adoption. However, he also stated: “I don’t have anything against homosexual people, nor do I hate them like the prosecutor says,” according to the Spanish publication ABC.
The judge says that he has been under pressure to leave the province of Murcia since the beginning of his career, because of his moral convictions as a Catholic.
“Since the beginning there has always been pressure for me to leave Murcia” because some people believe that “Catholics can’t be in Family Court” he told the Spanish radio network Onda Cero.
Calamita’s uncompromising stand has received accolades from Alpha and Omega, the magazine of the Catholic Diocese of Madrid, which has lauded his “heroism” and “coherence.”
If convicted in his trial, which has not yet concluded, the judge could spend up to three years in prison. He could also pay a fine of nine months of Spain’s minimum wage, and be barred from the bench for 18 years.
Calamita says he is confident that he will be exonerated by the trial.
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