Volume 25, Number 2    September 2003

 

Protest Vatican assault on same sex unions and gay parents

A harshly worded July 31 Vatican document against legal recognition of same sex unions has met with immediate resistance from religious and secular media, theologians, CTA and many other church reform groups.

The Vatican is clearly alarmed at the worldwide trend for governments to legally recognize same-sex relationships: 12 European nations now give gay couples at least some of the civil benefits of marriage. Heavily Catholic Croatia joined their ranks in July. So the new declaration commands all Catholics as well as Catholic politicians to conscientiously resist legitimization of gay unions.

CTA spokesperson, attorney Linda Pieczynski, issued a response Aug. 1, and debated the topic with a Chicago auxiliary bishop on public television. On the Vatican claim that supporting gay unions was "approval or legalization of evil," she said, "There is tremendous evil in this world involving terrible violence against children, as we have seen in the clergy sex abuse scandal. When we think of our relatives and friends who are in committed same sex relationships, 'evil' is not a word that can ever be used to describe them."

Gay adoption called 'violence'
The Vatican declares that same-sex couples who adopt children do them violence since they lack both a mother and a father. Yet gays and lesbians often open their homes to hard-to-adopt special needs children, while "the hierarchy has a terrible record of protecting children," Pieczynski said.

Duddy to address CTA
Vatican abuse of gays and lesbians will be addressed at the CTA conference Nov. 7-9 by Marianne Duddy. The choice could not be more timely. Duddy just left her job as executive director of Dignity/USA in order to spend more time at home in Boston, where she and her partner, Becky Burke, are parenting their daughter Emily. The couple entered a civil union in Vermont where a recent state law recognizes such unions. But a landmark case now before Massachusetts' highest court seeks to recognize same-gender marriage, and to use the word marriage.

Ignoring Vatican II
Rome insists a same-sex union can never be a marriage because the primary purpose of marriage is the procreation of children. But Vatican II deliberately avoided saying that, points out Timothy O'Connell, professor of Christian ethics at Loyola University Chicago, and a popular CTA speaker. Gaudium et Spes opens its section on marriage by stressing the relationship of the couple, "their conjugal love for one another." Besides marriage's generative purposes, the council said "other aspects of matrimony" should not be considered "of less account." Elevating these "other aspects," said O'Connell, opened a debate on the fundamental meaning of sexuality, a debate the Vatican neither takes part in nor even acknowledges.

 

What our speakers are saying: Richard Sipe

The Vatican argument that gay adoptions harm child development is based on no empirical evidence, says psychotherapist Richard Sipe, who has written widely on sexual issues. "The church's teaching on sexuality is pre-Copernican," he said. "It fails to take into account what we know today and what we are learning." Vatican claims that homosexuality is "disordered" are also wrong: most evidence today says sexual orientation is determined in the womb.

At the November CTA conference Sipe will speak on the church's outmoded sexuality views as related to clergy sexual abuse. (Click here for more information.)