In Mexico, Gays Defend Their Right to be Catholic

Social activists and members of "unusual couples," as the Catholic Church calls gay, lesbian and transsexual unions, are discussing possible actions to be taken on Jan. 13-18, 2009 when Mexico hosts the Sixth World Meeting of Families organised by the Vatican.

Many ideas are being considered, but the actual actions, which will include "some very important ones," will only be announced in early January, Víctor Espíndola, director of the Mexican Sexual Diversity News Agency, a non-governmental organisation specialising in lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and transsexual community-related issues, told IPS.

The World Meeting of Families in the Mexican capital will be the sixth edition of an event organised by the Catholic Church since 1994 -- the previous editions were held in Italy, Brazil, the Philippines and Spain -- that revolves around the concept that a family can only be formed by a man, a woman and their children.

"They say we’re not a family, but we are, and we’re also Catholic and proud of it," Esteban Castillo, an electronics specialist who lives with another man, told IPS.

Carrillo and a group of friends plan to gather with signs and a "surprise" element in front of the meeting’s venue -- the City Banamex bank convention centre in Mexico City -- and loudly voice their "right to be who we are, and demand to be respected and acknowledged as part of the Catholic community," as Carillo put it.

Espíndola, for his part, preferred not to reveal what his organisation is planning, but he did say that the very dynamics and diversity of the activists are a sure indication that there will be a wide variety of actions, even some decided on the very eve of the meeting, which, he says, will be no less important because of their spontaneity and improvisation.

The organisation of this year’s World Meeting of Families began during the last edition, which was held in Valencia, Spain, in 2006, and was attended by Pope Benedict XVI.

The head of the Catholic Church will not be present at this year’s edition, but more than 30 cardinals and 200 bishops from different countries will be participating, as well as hundreds of Catholic families from around the world.

The meeting is convened under the theme "The Family: Teacher of Human and Christian Values," and participants will discuss their faith and encourage all Catholics to embrace "a virtuous, moral conscience" at a time when, according to the Pope, "there is often a divorce between what one claims to believe and the way one actually lives."

The organisers have urged participants to repeatedly offer a certain prayer for families which clearly illustrates the Church’s view of the family as a heterosexual union formed for the sole purpose of reproduction.

In essence, the prayer says God is the creator of "the human being in your image," who "admirably formed him as male and female so that together and in reciprocal collaboration with love, they would fulfil His project of being fecund and dominate the earth."

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."