About 20,000 people flooded Costa Rican streets yesterday to protest proposed civil unions. Religious leaders also wrote to the government last week begging them to block the measure: "Laws favorable to homosexual unions are contrary to correct reasoning because they confer legal guarantees proper to the institution of marriage to unions between people of the same sex. Considering the values in question, the State cannot legalize these unions without failing in its duty to promote and protect an essential institution for the common good, which marriage is.” [CRP]