The official newspaper of the Vatican
has harshly criticized a French Catholic magazine's gay marriage
endorsement.
The paper L'Osservatore Romano
said it “regrets” Temoignage Chretien's endorsement of the
government's plans to legalize such unions possibly as early as next
year.
(Related: Tens
of thousands march in Paris to support gay marriage plans.)
“Homosexuality has been persecuted or
oppressed for many centuries,” the
magazine wrote. “However, it is a sexual orientation as
legitimate and worthy as heterosexuality. … To deny homosexuals
the [marriage] contract would add yet another discrimination to those
they have been too often subjected to.”
Marriage “is not only, as Temoignage
Chretien (Christian Witness) writes, a contract like any other,
which might work out or not, but the institution is the base of the
family, born to protect and ensure the birth of children,” the
Vatican's paper wrote.
“To say that marriage between a man
and a woman is like that between two homosexuals is a denial of the
truth that damages one of the basic structures of human society, the
family.”
The article, written by the paper's
editor, Lucetta Scaraffina, also argues against gay adoption, saying
it deprives children of their biological parents.