Vatican likens gay marriage to communism

Vatican likens gay marriage to communism

 

The Vatican has taken multiple blasts at same-sex marriage in the last month, just as it is on the way to becoming legal in Britain and France, and as a poll by an evangelical-backed organization finds opposition in the United States on the wane.
A front-page article in l’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, likens marriage equality to 20th-century communism, reports the Religion News Service, saying it is equal to “the egalitarian utopia that did so much damage during the 20th Century . . . deceiving humanity as socialism did in the past.”
The Vatican blast follows a Christmas season message of peace from Pope Benedict XVI, in which the pontiff spoke of protecting traditional marriage from “attempts to make it juridically equivalent to radically different types of unions.”
The pope spoke of “a crisis that threatens (the family in Western society) to its foundations,” condemning “a new philosophy of sexuality” which teaches that “sex is no longer a given element of nature” but a “social role to choose for ourselves.”
But marriage-equality bills are moving through the parliament in London, the assembly in Paris, and been upheld by the courts in Spain. And voters in Washington, Maryland and Maine approved same-sex marriage last November, while Minnesota voters rejected a bid — backed by the Catholic Church — to write a ban on marriage equality into the state constitution.