Roman Catholic congregations in churches across France prayed for traditional marriage on Wednesday, provoking accusations of homophobia from gay rights groups as Paris prepares to legalize same-sex matrimony.
The rare clerical foray into political debate, on the Assumption Day holiday observed in traditionally Catholic countries in Europe, referred only indirectly to the new marriage law the government plans to pass next year.
But the carefully worded text, first published earlier this month, dominated the news headlines in France, where the media have presented it as a strong attack on the reform.
Church leaders insisted their aim was to launch an open debate about plans to legalize same-sex marriage and euthanasia, two in a list of 60 pledges made by Francois Hollande in his successful election campaign for the presidency last spring.
"The Church wants a debate about social reforms that are coming soon and that really worry us," Monsignor Bernard Podvin, spokesman for the bishops' conference, told LCI television.
"This prayer does not exclude anyone," he said.
Gay rights groups disagreed. "This message is fertile ground for discrimination and homophobia," Michael Bouvard of the SOS Homophobie group told LCI. Secularists have also asked if the Church should publicly take sides in a political debate.
Here is a Google translation of the part of the prayer which the gay rights groups are saying represents "discrimination and homophobia":
"4. For children and youth that all we help everyone to discover their own path to progress towards happiness they cease to be the objects of desires and conflicts of adults to fully benefit from the love of a father and a mother."
21 Comments
Well, there defenitely appears to be some phobia, but not on the part of the Church.
Sounds like if you're secular, you can have an opinion on anything. But if you believe in something, that disqualifies you from debate.
Seems like more of the tolerant view that if you don't agree with us, you're a ______ (fill in the blank)
This is the price of allowing the government to take care of you.
According to Obama, your successes were granted to you by the government.
"Those who would give up Essential Liberty
to purchase a little Temporary Safety,
deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Benjamin Franklin
So many "Christians" just don't understand the consequences of allowing SSM. Pray for those who are blinded by "equality" to understand the ramifications of allowing SSM! It will not stop at trying to change prayer..... it will escalate! Guaranteed!! May God Help Us!!
They call anything that does not explicitly agree with their agenda discrimination and homophobia. They don't realize that they are the ones discriminating and phobic.
I feel that it is not the church and its members that have homophobia, it is the gay agenda that has a phobia against those who don't believe in there way of life!!! SAD!! Sounds like the French people don't have a say in what happens.
Seriously? This is offensive? How?
What in sam hill does "the love of a father and a mother" have to do with gay people? Don't they have moms & dads too?
In recent news, scientists discovered that homosexuals and their disillusioned activist supporters only use 5 percent of their brains rather than ten.
Ugh
Oh please, we've all heard that language enough to know that it's a code word.
And it's not gonna happen; harming gay people (including children) and gay-headed families (including children) does not magically cause mothers and fathers to spring from the Earth.
Not all children have that; stop hurting the ones that don't, *especially* if, not unless, you believe they are already disadvantaged.
You're the ones treating them like objects in your haste to harm adults you don't like, not your victims.
Stop turning discrimination into a prayer and you won't have this problem. Especially since you actually reference the admission that this isn't a prayer at all, but an attempt at a debate--talk about using children.
The bride+groom marriage requirement is discrimination, sure.
Society may discriminate in favor of the marriage idea. Marriage law is for marriage and not for other stuff (i.e. non-marital types of relationships).
But "homophobia"? Forget it. The SSM idea is so vague as to serve no purpose other than to demote the marriage idea from its special status to a barely tolerative status.
However, the promoters of the SSM idea mean that the marriage idea is discriminatory on the basis of same-sex sexual attraction (but that is not a criterion for ineligibility to marry) or on the basis of same-sex sexual romance (also not a criterion) or on the basis of same-sex sexual behavior (also not a criterion). Indeed, the SSM promoters do not propose that these become criteria for eligibility of a man to SSM with another man or for a woman to SSM with another woman. So their own SSM idea, in law, would make SSM a nonsexual type of relationship and that directly contradicts their excuse for imposition of their pro-SSM remedy.
Meanwhile, SSMers will lash back and say, hey there is no legal requirement for opposite-sex sexual attraction. Well, duh, that is correct so your complaint is mistaken. They say, but-but-but, there is no requirement for opposite-sex sexual romance. Again, duh, of course there isn't and that defeats your complaint. And then they place their hands on their hips and insist that there is no legal requirement for opposite-sex sexual behavior. Ah, but there is, and those who enter the social institution of marriage and consent to form the marital relationship, they do consent (and society consents as well) to the two-sexed sexual basis expressed in the bride+groom requirement, the sexual basis for consummation, annulment, adultery, and the marital presumption of paternity -- all expressions in our laws of the requirement to consent to the sexual basis of the comprehensive union of husband and wife.
The SSMers then lash out and insist that it is homophobic and discriminatory to favor such a type of relationship over the type that is segregative by sex and by sexual attraction. Yeap, their dislike of the marriage idea means they demand society dislike it too.
And for what reason? To elevate the immoral sexual behavior to which the one-sex-short scenario is limited? No, they insist, this is not about legislating morality. But listen to them equate the moral wrong of racism with the supposed wrong of the made-up farce known as "homophobia". They can't get their arguments rights so they demand that gay identity supersedes the good principles of lawmaking and the good principles of moral reasoning. They abandon the moral line of attack the moment they insist that lawmaking prohibits enshrining public morality on marriage.
SSM argumentation is a mess in any language.
Donna wrote,
>
> They call anything that does not explicitly agree with their agenda discrimination and homophobia. They don't realize that they are the ones discriminating and phobic.<
They use the negative connotation of the word "discrimination".
Everybody discriminates. There's discrimination that's illegal, and there's discrimination that's legal. There's discrimination that's bad, and there's discrimination that's good.
So now hoping that children have the love of a mother and father is "fertile ground for discrimination and homophobia"? Actually, that prayer could apply to any adult who selfishly seeks to deprive children of a mother and father--including single women who conceive children to raise them fatherless.
I don't understand how SSMers believe that government endorsement of their philosophy--i.e. believing that children should have a mother and father is hateful--will not in any way harm our marriage culture or government efforts to strengthen heterosexual relationships. After all, the father-child link is the one that marriage seeks to strengthen, and we witness the weakness of it in the absence of marriage. But I don't see how marriage and the family will be unaffected if the government were to adopt the view that if it is hateful to believe that motherhood and fatherhood are unique social goods worth promoting.
gayphobia @ its stupidest..dumb retards...
The promotion of gay identity politics, via SSM, requires them to attack marriage itself, and natural kinships, such as the parent/child relationship. The contradiction lies in the important differences between men and women. "Gay" people identify these differences, else how could they know they are attracted to the same sex? But in order to achieve SSM, they must proclaim that sex is important in a marriage partner, but somehow unimportant in a parent/child relationship. This, of course, is a logical fallacy. But one promoted every day, in order to divorce marriage from procreation.
I am a homophobic... I do not approve of same sex marriage. I do not approve of homosexual behavior. I have been accidently exposed to some of their gay pride day parades... They were ludicrous and disgusting... to see grown men and women in the costumes or lack thereof parading in our downtown area would make any on homophobic. Having said that, I do pray for their souls and do my best to love them as a neighbor...sometimes they do not make that easy.
The translation is poor but the coded intent seems to be to link homosexuality with incest and same sex parenting. It would naive to think the Catholic CHurch doesn't engage in such camouflaged homophobia. They have done in the past and they will do again.
Seems to be that the Gay Rights can say whatever they like, but if Christianity and other groups even dare to IMPLY what they believe, then they are discriminating.
Who's preaching tolerance? The "gay" people. Who actually is tolerant the most? Not the "gay" people.
Paul McMichael wrote,
> the coded intent seems to be to link homosexuality with incest and same sex parenting.
"The same-sex family is problematic because same-sex families intentionally deprive a child of either a mother or a father just because adults want it that way."
http://byfaithonline.com/the-cultural-argument-against-gay-marriage/
> It would naive to think the Catholic CHurch doesn't engage in such camouflaged homophobia."<
It's not fear or hatred of homosexuals. It's just a simple fact. Homosexual so-called "marriage" *is* linked to same-sex parenting.
A virtuous heart can take no offense at this prayer.
France is becoming more like Holland; it is very unreligious, abandoning their catholic roots and now supporting sexual sickness, euthanasia and aborting unborn babies.
Funnily enough if u flip the French flag by 90 degrees it becomes the Dutch flag.
Pray for Europe, folks and be glad that u live in godly America where the homosexual agenda is defeated every time at the ballot box!