Catholic MPs told to oppose same-sex ‘marriage’ moves

Sydney
10 August 2003

Catholic MPs told to oppose same-sex ‘marriage’ moves

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Catholic MPs told to oppose same-sex ‘marriage’ moves

By John Norton

The Vatican has called on lawmakers worldwide - especially Catholic politicians - to offer “clear and emphatic opposition” to moves to grant legal recognition to same-sex unions, which are contrary to human nature and ultimately harmful to society.

In a 12-page document, the Vatican expressed particular alarm at moves to allow gay couples to adopt children, which it said would be a form of “violence” against children as well as being “gravely immoral”.

It rejected arguments that failing to give gay unions legal recognition would be unjust discrimination.

The Vatican underscored the unique social role of marriage between a man and a woman in continuing the human race and raising children.

“The denial of the social and legal status of marriage to forms of cohabitation that are not and cannot be marital is not opposed to justice,” the document said.

“On the contrary, justice requires it.

“Legal recognition of homosexual unions or placing them on the same level as marriage would mean not only the approval of deviant behaviour, with the consequence of making it a model in present-day society, but would also obscure basic values which belong to the common inheritance of humanity.”

The Vatican document tells Catholic politicians that they are morally bound to oppose such “gravely unjust laws” and says all public servants have the right to conscientious objection if they are asked to apply them.

While presented as an aid to local bishops and all those who are “committed to promoting and defending the common good of society”, the document offers special instruction to Catholic politicians, who it says are particularly obliged to fight efforts to legally recognise gay unions.

When such legislation is first proposed, “the Catholic lawmaker 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,” it said.

In the face of already existing laws, the document said Catholic politicians must make their opposition known and work “in the ways that are possible” to repeal the law completely, or partially “when its total abrogation is not possible at the moment”.

A note at the end of the document says it has been approved by Pope John Paul II, who ordered its publication.

The document - Considerations regarding proposals to give legal recognition to unions between homosexual persons - coincided with a growing movement in Europe and North America towards granting gay couples some or all of the legal protections and benefits of marriage.

A day before the Vatican released its document, US President Bush said White House lawyers were exploring ways to ensure that “marriage” remains legally defined as a union between a man and a woman.

Some US lawmakers have proposed a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriages.

The Vatican’s document goes further than those proposals by rejecting any extension of special rights or legal status to homosexual couples.

Cohabiting homosexuals could use general provisions of the law to protect their rights as persons “like all citizens from the standpoint of their private autonomy”, it says.

“Not even in a remote analogous sense do homosexual unions fulfil the purpose for which marriage and family deserve specific categorical recognition,” the document says.

“On the contrary, there are good reasons for holding that such unions are harmful to the proper development of human society, especially if their impact on society were to increase,” it said.

In a footnote, the document warned of the “danger” that granting legal status to gay unions “could actually encourage a person with a homosexual orientation to declare his homosexuality and even to seek a partner in order to exploit the provisions of the law”.

Noting that civil laws play an “important and sometimes decisive role in influencing patterns of thought and behaviour,” the document said giving legal status to gay unions would expose young people, especially, to erroneous ideas about sexuality and marriage, and thus could “contribute to the spread of the phenomenon”.

The document also condemned legislative moves to allow gay couples to adopt, saying that being deprived of having either a mother or a father has been shown to harm children’s normal development.

“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 development,” it said.

It said gay adoption is not only “gravely immoral”, but also openly contradicts the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which says consideration of the best interests of the child must be paramount.