The leader of the Italian Senate, Marcello Pera, said this week the approval of homosexual “marriage” and no-fault divorce in Spain are not “civil conquests” but rather the triumph of secularism and the identity crisis that plagues Europe.

Speaking at a summer university program in Navacerrada, the Italian senator said that in Spain the very idea of marriage suffered a double pronged and well thought-out attack: “on the one hand quick divorce, and on the other homosexual marriage.”  In this sense, he noted, “a beautiful portion of our identity has disappeared.”

According to Pera, “This is not about ‘civil conquests’ or measures ‘against discrimination’ or the ‘expanding of equality.’  Rather, it’s about the triumph of a secularism that seeks to transform desires, and sometimes even whims, into fundamental human rights.”

Secularism, he continued, is about experiments in social engineering, and in Spain secularism has made homosexual marriage its bull’s eye.  Europe is experiencing a “progressive loss” of its identity due to the prevailing “cultural relativism” whose language is that which is “politically correct” and which has today become a “neo-language.”

Pera maintained that the West “believes that if it were to affirm its own principles and values and show the force of its own identity, it would be an arrogant and contemptible West.”  “And since the West on the contrary claims to be open and in dialogue with everyone instead of defending itself, it is weakened and hides its own identity,” he added.