Vatican’s Renewed Opposition to Gay Rights is a Threat to Democracy

KENILWORTH, 29 JULY 2003 — The Vatican’s latest attack on gay rights is a threat to the democratic process in the West, says the Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association (GALHA).

“The Vatican’s call on Catholic politicians to defy the democratic will of their constituents and cast their vote in the way the Vatican wants it is anti-democratic and dangerous,” said Terry Sanderson, a spokesperson for GALHA. “It is a clear illustration of why the Vatican’s power in the UN and the EU must be curbed.”

GALHA’s statement comes after the Vatican issued a document Considerations Regarding Proposals to Give Recognition to Unions Between Homosexual Persons, which says the issue is not up for negotiation and that Catholic politicians are required by the Holy See to stand against these proposals.

The issue of legal recognition for gay relationships is on the agenda in several countries at present – including Britain and Canada.

Terry Sanderson commented: “Throughout the developed world, surveys show that attitudes to the granting of civil rights to homosexuals are softening. The idea that permitting some kind of legal recognition to gay relationships is a threat to marriage is simply a red herring. What is actually happening here is that the Vatican is trying to revive its own waning influence by defining gay people as a threat to morality and then attacking us.”

Terry Sanderson said that the demand for Catholic politicians to follow the Vatican line rather than their own conscience was dangerous and a threat to open politics. “Do the people who elected these politicians realise that the strings are being pulled by a wholly unelected and unrepresentative theocracy?”

Notes for editors:

Considerations Regarding Proposals to Give Recognition to Unions Between Homosexual Persons will be issued on Thursday 31 July 2003 in several languages. The document’s importance to the Vatican was underlined in a speech last Sunday by the Pope, who lamented the watering down of his message on “the family” throughout Europe.

Gay marriage is already possible in the Netherlands and Belgium and other gay partnership arrangements are extant in many other EU countries. The British government has a public consultation open on its own plans at the moment. It is hoped that proposals will be announced in November’s Queen’s Speech.