Spanish interior minister says 'survival of species' at stake in gay marriage row Jorge Fernandez Diaz, interior minister in Spain's conservative government argued that "religious reasons" were not arguments against a law allowing gay marriage. Instead, he insisted: "There are rational arguments to back the idea that these marriages shouldn't have the same protection under the law as normal ones. For example, the survival of the species is not guaranteed. Gay rights groups immediately called on Mr Fernandez Diaz to resign as party members sought to distance themselves from his remarks. Inaki Oyarzabal, the secretary of justice, rights and freedoms, for the ruling Popular Party said the comments, which were made during a symposium on religion and state at the Spanish embassy in Rome on Sunday, were "unfortunate." "The unfortunate words of Fernandez Diaz on marriage between same-sex couples are personal and in no way linked to the PP," Mr Oyazabal, who became the first Popular Party parliamentarian to be openly gay when he came out last June, wrote on his Twitter account. Spain's National Federation of Lesbians, Gays, Transexuals and Bisexuals (FELGTB) called on Mr Fernandez Diaz to resign for "re-questioning, in unscientific terms, the issue of same-sex marriages, a law supported by the vast majority of Spaniards and which was recently endorsed by the Constitutional Court." In November, Spain's highest court upheld a law legalising same-sex marriage brought in by the socialist government of Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero in 2005. The Popular Party lost their seven-year battle to overturn the law when the Constitutional Court rejected an appeal contending that marriage in the Spanish constitution meant only the union between a man and a woman. More than 22,000 gay marriages have taken place since Spain became the world's third country to approve the law.