Catholic Church Starts Campaign Against Gay Marriage

VATICAN CITY (AP) July 31, 2004 - The Vatican launched a global campaign against gay marriages Thursday, warning Catholic politicians that support of same-sex unions was "gravely immoral'' and urging non-Catholics to join the offensive.

The Vatican's orthodoxy watchdog, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, issued a 12-page set of guidelines with the approval of Pope John Paul II in a bid to stem the increase in laws granting legal rights to homosexual unions in Europe and North America.

"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,'' the document said. "Marriage is holy, while homosexual acts go against the natural moral law.''

The Associated Press was first to report on the outline of the plan in a story Monday.

The issue is particularly charged in the United States, where some in Congress have proposed a constitutional ban on gay marriage to counter state laws granting legal recognition to same-sex unions.

President Bush said Wednesday that marriage was defined strictly as a union between a man and a woman and said he wants to "codify that one way or the other.''

The Vatican document, "Considerations Regarding Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Unions Between Homosexual Persons,'' sets out a plan for politicians when confronted with proposed legislation granting homosexual couples the same rights as married heterosexuals.

It also comes out strongly against allowing gay couples to adopt, saying children raised by same-sex parents face developmental "obstacles'' because they are deprived of having either a mother or a father.

"Allowing children to be adopted by persons living in such unions would actually mean doing violence to these children,'' it said.

It said gay adoptions contradicted the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, which holds that the best interests of the child are paramount.

The document also says Catholic politicians have a "moral duty'' to publicly oppose laws granting recognition to homosexual unions and to vote against them.

If the laws are already on the books, politicians must speak out against them and work to repeal them. "To vote in favor of a law so harmful to the common good is gravely immoral,'' the document said.

The Vatican said its guidelines were not only intended for Catholic lawmakers but for non-Christians and everyone "committed to promoting and defending the common good of society'' since the issue concerned natural moral law, not just Church doctrine.

The document comes after an appeals court in Canada ruled in June that the country's definition of marriage as only between a man and a woman is unconstitutional, paving the way for legalized gay unions.

Vermont and some European nations -- including Germany, France, Sweden and Denmark -- have "civil union'' laws giving same-sex couples the rights and responsibilities of marriage.

The document doesn't contain any new Church teachings on the issue, repeating much of the Vatican's previous comments on homosexuality and marriage, which it defines as a sacred union between man and woman designed to create new human life.

It said homosexuals shouldn't be discriminated against, but said denying gay couples the rights afforded in traditional marriages isn't discrimination.

Monsignor Angel Rodriguez Luno, a professor at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, noted in a statement released by the Vatican that homosexual relationships, like other human relationships, need not be legally recognized.

Basic friendship, for example, isn't defined legally because it is a private relationship, he said.

In a footnote, the Vatican document noted that there was a danger that laws legalizing same-sex unions could actually encourage someone with a homosexual orientation to seek out a partner to "exploit the provisions of the law.''

On Thursday, a small group of demonstrators from Italy's Radical Party held up banners at the edge of St. Peter's Square to protest the document. The banners read "No Vatican, No Taliban,'' and "Democracy Yes, Theocracy No.''

Other opposition to the document came from the Green Party in predominantly Catholic Austria. Ulrike Lunacek, a party spokeswoman, said Catholic politicians should follow human rights conventions, "not the old-fashioned views of the Vatican.''

"This hierarchy, which also rules on other issues like forbidding the use of condoms to avoid AIDS, is far from reality,'' she said in a statement.

Volker Beck, a lawmaker from Germany's Greens party, which led the drive for the same-sex civil union legislation, described the Vatican guidelines as "a document of narrow-minded fanaticism.''

A leading conservative politician and a Catholic, Wolfgang Bosbach, gave it a warmer reception: "I assume every Catholic lawmaker will take account of the Holy Father's words in making his decision.''