Vatican steps up anti-gay media efforts, compares being gay to polygamy
The Vatican appears to be continuing to launch a new wave of efforts to strenghthen its opposition to LGBT rights, particularly equal marriage, using newspapers and radio broadcasts to describe it as “intrinsically disordered”, and to compare it to polygamy and polyandry.
Vatican spokesperson Reverend Federico Lombardi had likened equal marriage to polyandry and polygamy during an editorial on Vatican Radio.
The radio service is a worldwide broadcast sent out in 30 languages, Reuters reported.
He said: “It is clear that in Western countries there is a widespread tendency to modify the classic vision of marriage between a man and woman, or rather to try to give it up, erasing its specific and privileged legal recognition compared to other forms of union.”
“Monogamous marriage between a man and woman is an achievement of civilisation,” he continued.
He questioned whether, if equal marriage were to become commonplace,”why not contemplate also freely chosen polygamy and, of course, not to discriminate, polyandry?”
Polyandry is a form of polygamy where a woman has more than one husband.
Also at the weekend, the semi-official newspaper of the Holy See, L’Osservatore Romano, seemed to be attempting to downplay recent equal marriage victories in the US and Europe.
“You could say that the church, on this level, is bound to lose,” Scaraffia wrote, “but this is not the case.”
He also said that the “church’s fight on moral issues such as gay marriage and abortion has drawn support and admiration from many non-Catholics.”
This week, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops convened, and stood firm with the Vatican’s line that equal marriage, and rights for LGBT people, are wrong.
Salon.com’s Mary Elizabeth Williams responded to the anti-gay efforts of the Catholic Church, saying:
“Why not? If two men can pledge their love in a legally recognised union, who’s to stop a woman from marrying a wedge of cheese, right? I mean, where does it end?”
Ms Williams continued, saying that the large number of Catholics who voted for President Barack Obama last week, could indicate that actually, many catholics do “believe in marriage equality and the reproductive rights of our fellow citizens.”
