The Vatican on Saturday responded to
big wins for gay marriage advocates in the United States and Europe.
In recent days, voters in four U.S.
states – Maryland,
Maine, Washington state and Minnesota – gave marriage equality
advocates their first wins at the ballot box, ending a previous
31-state winning streak for opponents. Spain's
Constitutional Court ratified the nation's 2005 law legalizing such
unions. And in France, the
government approved a proposed gay nuptials bill, sending it to
lawmakers for debate.
The Roman Catholic Church has
vociferously defended limiting marriage to heterosexual couples.
In an article in L'Osservatore
Romano, the Vatican's semiofficial newspaper, historian Lucetta
Scaraffia claimed that the church is the only global institution
capable of fighting the forces that threaten to “break up … human
society.”
By opposing such social issues,
abortion included, the church “made it clear for everyone that this
is not about progress” but about the loss of religious freedom.
A Vatican spokesman went further in a
Vatican Radio editorial, taunting marriage equality proponents to
push for the legal recognition of plural relationships.
(Source:
The AP.)