Catholic Church in mixed message on LGBT equality

Stanley Baxter as a Religious BishopThe Catholic Church has released a statement which on one hand suggests same sex households offer a loving and caring environment to youngsters while adding that same sex marriage is unacceptable.

“Marriage has, over the centuries, been the enduring public recognition of this commitment to provide a stable institution for the care and protection of children, and it has rightly been recognised as unique and worthy of legal protection for this reason.” They state in a document issued to MPs ahead of the parliamentary debate and vote on making same sex marriage legal.

This, as outlined by ATV Today earlier, is absolutely not the case at all. Marriages were, until relatively recently in England, mostly arranged and were not love matches of two people’s free will like today.

The unions were often treated as business transactions and until relatively recently, given how old the concept of marriage is, child brides were common place.

The religious body’s document continues, “We recognise that many same sex couples raise children in loving and caring homes. Nevertheless, marriage has an identity that at its core is distinct from any other legally recognised relationship, no matter how much love or commitment may be involved in these other relationships.”

The reason the Catholic Church is ‘against’ the live and let live equality measure is noted as being due to homosexual unions, despite being loving, not providing a ‘common good’ for overall society.

Ignored is heterosexual issues where abuse and violence can be common place within a family, which is equally not providing a ‘common good’ to society. However such unions of opposite-sex marriage are accepted without question.

The Church adds “The basic argument that is advanced in favour of same sex marriage is one of equality and fairness. But we suggest that this intuitively appealing argument is fundamentally flawed. Those who argue for same sex marriage do so on the basis that it is unjust to treat same sex and heterosexual relationships differently in allowing only heterosexual couples access to marriage. Our principal argument against this is that it is not unequal or unfair to treat those in different circumstances differently. Indeed, to treat them the same would itself be unjust.”

It has been noted that such vigorous opposition is far from what Jesus preached, with his love and acceptance for all tossed aside for often bigoted out-of-date, and especially out-of-touch, views from a body that is fast losing power as church attendance continues to fall and people fail to want to be told how to live their lives by religious figures any longer.

[Reported by Neil Lang]