Gay and lesbian Catholic and civil-rights groups condemned last week's pronouncement from the Catholic Church opposing same-sex marriage and gay and lesbian parents, and calling for all Catholic politicians to strongly oppose any legislation proposed or in place that would allow these rights.
Just as U.S. President George W. Bush was proclaiming his opposition to same-sex marriage, based on his faith [ see story this issue ] , the Catholic Church put their big papal hat into the marriage ring debate.
DignityUSA, the organization of GLBT Catholics and their supporters, strongly denounced the document, Considerations Regarding Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Unions Between Homosexual Persons, released July 31.
' [ This ] document ... is an absolute perversion of the Catholic social justice tradition,' said Marianne Duddy, DignityUSA's executive director. 'It starts from the premise that all people are not created equal, and that laws should reinforce that inequality. The Vatican has poured out increasingly harsh rhetoric against equal civil protections for committed gay and lesbian couples and our families in recent years. This new document is intended to intimidate public officials across the globe into doing what the Vatican has not been able to do on its own—stem the growing tide for justice.'
Chicago's Francis Cardinal George felt the need to apologize to the Pope personally for a Chicago Sun-Times headline that read 'Pope Launches Global Campaign Vs. Gays.' He said the headline misrepresented the Catholic position, saying the move last week is consistent with the traditional teachings of the church—it's not a new campaign.
'This document is nothing more than a broadside attack against gay and lesbian people and our families,' said Equality Illinois Director Rick Garcia. 'The document reflects hypocrisy and promotes animosity toward gay and lesbian people. The Church does not recognize a variety of relationships and yet there are no directives promulgated worldwide urging legislators to ban divorce or artificial contraception. This document is not born out of a desire to uphold the Faith; it is born out of rank anti-gay bigotry—pure and simple.'
Garcia noted that the Vatican has consistently turned a blind eye to the problems of sexual abuse by Catholic priests. 'It is nothing less than vile when a church has employed, defended and covered up for sexual predators and rapists but it attacks law-abiding, faithful, and productive lesbian and gay members of our society,' said Garcia.
The document attacked not just same-sex marriage, but also gay and lesbian parents: 'Allowing children to be adopted by persons living in such unions would actually mean doing violence to these children, in the sense that their condition of dependency would be used to place them in an environment that is not conducive to their full human development.'
This angered the Family Pride Coalition, which hosted their annual Family Week event in Provincetown just as the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith paper was released, with approval from Pope John Paul II.
'The statements from the Vatican completely and conveniently ignore the social science research which shows that children with lesbian and gay parents are thriving,' said Aimee Gelnaw, executive director of the Family Pride Coalition. 'We believe the Vatican's statement is not only inaccurate, but also misguided and dangerous. ...'
'The Christian Scriptures teach that God is love. All love, including same-sex love, reflects God's heart and should be honored and celebrated,' said Rev. Troy Perry, founder and moderator of the Metropolitan Community Churches.
Demonstrators from Italy's Radical Party held up banners at the edge of St. Peter's Square to protest the document, AP reported. The banners read 'No Vatican, No Taliban' and 'Democracy Yes, Theocracy No.'
Michael B. Kelly, spokesperson for the Australian 'Rainbow Sash Movement,' condemned the document as 'relentlessly negative, cold-hearted and an insult to the dignity of gay and lesbian persons.' He said that while there were no new doctrinal points in it, the 'harsh authoritarian tone' used and the demands made on Catholic politicians are 'offensive and alarming.'
The Human Rights Campaign said that while same-sex marriages are a goal in the U.S., 'religious institutions will not be forced to recognize the civil marriages of gay and lesbian couples.' HRC also urged American lawmakers to be mindful of the nation's founding principle of the separation of church and state.
'Our nation was founded by those who held deeply in their hearts the principle that religious matters should be separate from state matters,' said Elizabeth Birch, HRC's executive director. 'It's important for lawmakers—and the American people—to understand that civil marriage is about receiving more than 1,000 protections and rights under federal and state law. Civil marriage strengthens families by giving them access to an important safety net provided by federal and state laws consisting of Social Security survivor benefits, hospital visitation rights and the ability to inherit a spouse's property without being taxed, among other protections. No religious institution would be forced to recognize these marriages, just as the Catholic Church isn't forced to recognize the marriage of someone who has been divorced.'
'This Vatican document against same-sex marriages may seem like an attack on LGBT people—but it is not. It is an admission of failure,' said Kursad Kahramanoglu, Secretary General of the International Lesbian and Gay Association ( ILGA ) , commenting from Manila, The Philippines, where he is inspecting the preparations for the 22nd ILGA World Conference. 'After years of attacks on us, the present conservative Pope is now asking democratically elected politicians to do for him what he himself failed to achieve: to stop the tide of history and discriminate against same-sex couples.'
The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation pointed to a speech by President John F. Kennedy, made while he was running for office in 1960, that is relevant today [ see www.cs.umb.edu/jfklibrary/j091260.htm ] .
'I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute—where no Catholic prelate would tell the President ( should he be Catholic ) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote ... . I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish—where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source—where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials,' Kennedy said.
Excerpts
July 31, 2003: CONGREGATION FOR THE DOCTRINE OF THE FAITH
CONSIDERATIONS REGARDING PROPOSALS TO GIVE LEGAL
RECOGNITION TO UNIONS BETWEEN HOMOSEXUAL PERSONS
I. THE NATURE OF MARRIAGE AND ITS INALIENABLE CHARACTERISTICS
2. The Church's teaching on marriage and on the complementarity of the sexes reiterates a truth that is evident to right reason and recognized as such by all the major cultures of the world. Marriage is not just any relationship between human beings. It was established by the Creator with its own nature, essential properties and purpose. ... No ideology can erase from the human spirit the certainty that marriage exists solely between a man and a woman, who by mutual personal gift, proper and exclusive to themselves, tend toward the communion of their persons. ...
3. The natural truth about marriage was confirmed by the Revelation contained in the biblical accounts of creation, an expression also of the original human wisdom, in which the voice of nature itself is heard. There are three fundamental elements of the Creator's plan for marriage, as narrated in the Book of Genesis.
vIn the first place, man, the image of God, was created 'male and female' ( Gen 1:27 ) . Men and women are equal as persons and complementary as male and female. Sexuality is something that pertains to the physical-biological realm and has also been raised to a new level—the personal level—where nature and spirit are united.
Marriage is instituted by the Creator as a form of life in which a communion of persons is realized involving the use of the sexual faculty. ...
Third, God has willed to give the union of man and woman a special participation in his work of creation. Thus, he blessed the man and the woman with the words 'Be fruitful and multiply' ( Gen 1:28 ) . Therefore, in the Creator's plan, sexual complementarity and fruitfulness belong to the very nature of marriage.
Furthermore, the marital union of man and woman has been elevated by Christ to the dignity of a sacrament. ...
4. There are absolutely no grounds for considering homosexual unions to be in any way similar or even remotely analogous to God's plan for marriage and family. Marriage is holy, while homosexual acts go against the natural moral law. Homosexual acts 'close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.'
Sacred Scripture condemns homosexual acts 'as a serious depravity ... ( cf. Rom 1:24-27; 1 Cor 6:10; 1 Tim 1:10 ) . This judgment of Scripture does not of course permit us to conclude that all those who suffer from this anomaly are personally responsible for it, but it does attest to the fact that homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.' ...
Nonetheless, according to the teaching of the Church, men and women with homosexual tendencies 'must be accepted with respect, compassion and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided.' They are called, like other Christians, to live the virtue of chastity. The homosexual inclination is however 'objectively disordered' and homosexual practices are 'sins gravely contrary to chastity.'
II. POSITIONS ON THE PROBLEM OF HOMOSEXUAL UNIONS
5. Faced with the fact of homosexual unions, civil authorities adopt different positions. At times they simply tolerate the phenomenon; at other times they advocate legal recognition of such unions, under the pretext of avoiding, with regard to certain rights, discrimination against persons who live with someone of the same sex. In other cases, they favour giving homosexual unions legal equivalence to marriage properly so-called, along with the legal possibility of adopting children.
Where the government's policy is de facto tolerance and there is no explicit legal recognition of homosexual unions, it is necessary to distinguish carefully the various aspects of the problem. Moral conscience requires that, in every occasion, Christians give witness to the whole moral truth, which is contradicted both by approval of homosexual acts and unjust discrimination against homosexual persons. Therefore, discreet and prudent actions can be effective; these might involve: unmasking the way in which such tolerance might be exploited or used in the service of ideology; stating clearly the immoral nature of these unions; reminding the government of the need to contain the phenomenon within certain limits so as to safeguard public morality and, above all, to avoid exposing young people to erroneous ideas about sexuality and marriage that would deprive them of their necessary defences and contribute to the spread of the phenomenon. Those who would move from tolerance to the legitimization of specific rights for cohabiting homosexual persons need to be reminded that the approval or legalization of evil is something far different from the toleration of evil.
In those situations where homosexual unions have been legally recognized or have been given the legal status and rights belonging to marriage, clear and emphatic opposition is a duty. ...
III. ARGUMENTS FROM REASON AGAINST LEGAL RECOGNITION OF HOMOSEXUAL UNIONS
6. To understand why it is necessary to oppose legal recognition of homosexual unions, ethical considerations of different orders need to be taken into consideration.
—From the order of right reason
The scope of the civil law is certainly more limited than that of the moral law, but civil law cannot contradict right reason without losing its binding force on conscience. Every humanly-created law is legitimate insofar as it is consistent with the natural moral law, recognized by right reason, and insofar as it respects the inalienable rights of every person. Laws in favour of homosexual unions are contrary to right reason because they confer legal guarantees, analogous to those granted to marriage, to unions between persons of the same sex. ...
... Civil laws are structuring principles of man's life in society, for good or for ill. ... Legal recognition of homosexual unions would obscure certain basic moral values and cause a devaluation of the institution of marriage.
—From the biological and anthropological order
7. Homosexual unions are totally lacking in the biological and anthropological elements of marriage and family which would be the basis, on the level of reason, for granting them legal recognition. Such unions are not able to contribute in a proper way to the procreation and survival of the human race. The possibility of using recently discovered methods of artificial reproduction, beyond involving a grave lack of respect for human dignity, does nothing to alter this inadequacy.
Homosexual unions are also totally lacking in the conjugal dimension, which represents the human and ordered form of sexuality. Sexual relations are human when and insofar as they express and promote the mutual assistance of the sexes in marriage and are open to the transmission of new life.
As experience has shown, the absence of sexual complementarity in these unions creates obstacles in the normal development of children who would be placed in the care of such persons. They would be deprived of the experience of either fatherhood or motherhood. Allowing children to be adopted by persons living in such unions would actually mean doing violence to these children, in the sense that their condition of dependency would be used to place them in an environment that is not conducive to their full human development. This is gravely immoral and in open contradiction to the principle, recognized also in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, that the best interests of the child, as the weaker and more vulnerable party, are to be the paramount consideration in every case.
— From the social order
8. Society owes its continued survival to the family, founded on marriage. The inevitable consequence of legal recognition of homosexual unions would be the redefinition of marriage, which would become, in its legal status, an institution devoid of essential reference to factors linked to heterosexuality ... procreation and raising children ... .
— From the legal order
9. Because married couples ensure the succession of generations and are therefore eminently within the public interest, civil law grants them institutional recognition. Homosexual unions, on the other hand, do not need specific attention from the legal standpoint since they do not exercise this function for the common good ... .
IV. POSITIONS OF CATHOLIC POLITICIANS WITH REGARD TO LEGISLATION IN FAVOUR OF HOMOSEXUAL UNIONS
10. If it is true that all Catholics are obliged to oppose the legal recognition of homosexual unions, Catholic politicians are obliged to do so in a particular way, in keeping with their responsibility as politicians. Faced with legislative proposals in favour of homosexual unions, Catholic politicians are to take account of the following ethical indications.
When legislation in favour of the recognition of homosexual unions is proposed for the first time in a legislative assembly, the Catholic law-maker has a moral duty to express his opposition clearly and publicly and to vote against it. To vote in favour of a law so harmful to the common good is gravely immoral. When legislation in favour of the recognition of homosexual unions is already in force, the Catholic politician must oppose it in the ways that are possible for him and make his opposition known; it is his duty to witness to the truth. ...
