In Mexico, Gays Defend Their Right to be Catholic

By Diego Cevallos, IPS News. Posted December 30, 2008.

Carrillo said that even though the Church rejects his sexual orientation, he still goes to mass regularly. "It’s unfair for them to exclude and demonise us for forming part of a different kind of couple," he complained.

But he is confident that that will change in the not-so-distant future, "that is, if the Vatican doesn’t want to be left without followers."

In 2006 same-sex couples were termed "unusual families" in a document entitled "Family and Human Procreation" distributed by the Pontifical Council for the Family -- a Vatican body created by Pope John Paul II in 1981 to "promote the pastoral care of families" and "encourage studies in the spirituality of marriage and the family."

In this document, besides addressing the issue of family and homosexuality, the Catholic Church restates its categorical rejection of abortion and the use of artificial birth control methods, and criticises feminist groups and scientists who conduct embryonic stem-cell research.

The Church warns that it cannot accept homosexual unions and much less allow adoption by same-sex couples. However, it says it will accept anyone with such sexual orientation if they wish to come closer to God.

Elio Masferrer, president of the Latin American Association for the Study of Religions, told IPS that by not accepting the right of gays, lesbians and transsexuals to live as couples, the Catholic Church was excluding a significant part of society and thus fuelling the loss of followers.

In October 2004, at the Eucharistic Congress held in Mexico, the attending prelates declared that the Catholic Church would never accept homosexuality as something "normal."

"It is unacceptable to maintain that anything living under the same roof -- including cockroaches, cats and dogs -- can be called a family, which is what those who defend homosexual marriage want," Bishop Javier Lozano, president of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Health, said at the meeting.

Activists react whenever anyone takes a stand against sexual diversity or whenever homosexuals are targeted directly, and the upcoming World Meeting of Families will be no exception, the director of the Mexican Sexual Diversity News Agency said.

The meeting will take place in a city where the municipal government and legislative body have clashed repeatedly with Catholic Church authorities over municipal laws that recognise same-sex civil unions, legalise abortion, allow transsexuals to change their birth certificates to reflect their gender identity, and recognise the right of terminal patients to suspend medical treatment.

Enrique Glennie, executive secretary of the Mexican Episcopate Conference’s Family Pastoral, declared that with these laws, the city’s authorities have only furthered the breakdown of the family.

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