The Vatican Toes the Line

Outside the United States (and Latin America), where the validity of homosexual marriage is still being contested, the Western world marches determinedly toward codified degeneracy — and inevitable collapse and ruin. It often seems that there is but a solitary figure in Europe holding the line against the advancing Goliath. This past December the Vatican made bold to publicly and vociferously oppose a United Nations declaration submitted by France. The proposed declaration condemns “discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity,” and calls on the world’s governments to “decriminalize homosexuality” by ensuring that “sexual orientation and gender identity may under no circumstances be the basis for criminal penalties.” Sodomy is punishable by law in more than 85 countries and is a capital offense in Afghanistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Yemen — Islamic countries all.

Archbishop Celestino Migliore, the Vatican’s envoy to the UN, explained the Holy See’s opposition by stating that France’s declaration would “add new categories of those protected from discrimination.” The declaration’s rebound effect would be reverse discrimination and the targeting of those who promote and defend traditional marriage as a union between a man and a woman. It would, reasoned Archbishop Migliore, “create new and implacable discriminations. For example, states which do not recognize same-sex unions as ‘matrimony’ will be pilloried and made an object of pressure.” The Archbishop’s prediction has already come to pass in California (see the preceding New Oxford Note) — it is not farfetched that the same scenes would play out throughout the Continent.

Archbishop Migliore excoriated the declaration in harsh terms — harsher than we’ve become accustomed to. According to a report from LifeSiteNews (Dec. 3, 2008), he called France’s declaration “sad and outrageous,” describing it as a form of “modern savagery” that would “dismantle our society from the inside out.”

But bold stands provoke equally strong reactions, and various movers and shakers and opinion-makers let loose their own condemnations. Margherita Boniver, a high-profile member of Italy’s Democratic Party, called the Vatican’s reasoning “alarmingly anachronistic.” Rome’s La Repubblica newspaper said the Vatican’s stance “leaves one dumbstruck.” Not to be outdone, Italy’s La Stampa newspaper called the Vatican’s reasoning “grotesque” and accused the Holy See of supporting the death penalty for homosexuals.