Attacks by the far-right Vox party on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights are testing years of political consensus on the issue in Spain, which in 2005 became only the third country in the world to allow same-sex marriage.

In the campaign for this Sunday’s local, regional and EU elections, Vox has pledged to curtail gay pride parades, heaped ridicule on diversity lessons it wants to scrap in schools and has even drawn parallels between homosexuality and bestiality.

The nationalist, anti-immigration Vox won about 10 percent of the votes in a national election last month to become the first far-right party with a significant number of lawmakers since the death of dictator Francisco Franco in 1975.

It now hopes to enhance its clout in Sunday’s new batch of elections, and in its hunt for votes has shifted the focus of its attacks away from Catalonia’s independence drive and on to the LGBT community.

Since the 2005 approval of the same-sex marriage bill by the parties of the left, center-left and center-right, even the main conservative People’s Party (PP) which vehemently opposed it has changed tack, approving various bills in defense of LGBT rights. Some of its politicians have come out as gay and married their partners. Read more via Reuters