Vatican official condemns UN report urging laws protecting homosexuals from ‘discrimination’
H.E. Archbishop Silvano Tomasi (Photo credit: UK in Holy See)March 15, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The Vatican’s principal representative before the United Nations, Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, is objecting to demands to outlaw “discrimination” against homosexuals in a report commissioned by the United Nations Human Rights Council, on “Discriminatory Laws and Practices and Acts of Violence against Individuals based on their Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity”.
In response to the claim advanced by the UN High Commissioner of Human Rights that governments are obligated to “ensure that unmarried same-sex couples are treated in the same way and entitled to the same benefits as unmarried opposite-sex couples,” Tomasi responds that the language threatens the institution of marriage.Tomasi is concerned that the document’s language gives special treatment to homosexuals and threatens the institution of marriage. It also threatens to give rights to people based on their “gender identity,” which is the gender a person claims to have, as opposed to his actual, physical gender.
“In this regard, the Holy See expresses grave concern that, under the guise of ‘protecting’ people from discrimination and violence on the basis of perceived sexual differences, this Council may be running the risk of demeaning the sacred and time-honoured legal institution of marriage between man and woman, between husband and wife, which enjoyed special protection from time immemorial within legal, cultural, and religious traditions and within the modern human rights instruments, starting with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and extending to numerous other covenants, treaties, and laws,” writes Tomasi.
“If marriage were to be re-defined in a way that makes other relationships equivalent to it, as has occurred in some countries and as the High Commissioner seems to be encouraging in her Report, the institution of marriage, and consequently the natural family itself, will be both devalued and weakened,” he adds.
While the Holy See’s delegation condemns violence against those with “perceived sexual differences,” it notes that “Such situations cannot be resolved by defining new categories, laws or policies that posit rights and privileges to special groups in society” and “finds both confusing and misleading the High Commissioner’s decision to further develop her argumentation with an exclusive focus on those persons subjected to discrimination and violence on the basis of their perceived sexual differences.”
“The rights cited by the High Commissioner are rights that should and must be universally respected and enjoyed; thus efforts to particularize or to develop special rights for special groups of people could easily put at risk the universality of these rights,” writes Tomasi.
Tomasi’s delegation also raises “serious concern with the insertion of terms such as ‘sexual orientation’ and ‘gender identity’ which do not enjoy mention in binding documents of the United Nations..”
As LifeSiteNews has reported, the report was commissioned by the UN’s Human Rights Council in June of last year, in a move that appears calculated to advance the homosexual political agenda and create special legal rights and privileges for those involved in the practice of sodomy.
While the Holy See teaches that homosexuals should not be victims of “unjust discrimination,” it also acknowledges that forms of discrimination can be justified or are even “obligatory,” especially in cases in which homosexuals are openly involved in homosexual conduct, or pose a threat to children and other vulnerable groups. These teachings, which are often unknown to Catholic politicians, were expressed by then Cardinal Josef Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, in a declaration issued under his authority in 1992.
“‘Sexual orientation’ does not constitute a quality comparable to race, ethnic background, etc. in respect to non-discrimination. Unlike these, homosexual orientation is an objective disorder (cf. Letter, no. 3) and evokes moral concern,” wrote Ratzinger as the head of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
“There are areas in which it is not unjust discrimination to take sexual orientation into account, for example, in the placement of children for adoption or foster care, in employment of teachers or athletic coaches, and in military recruitment,” he added.
