Challenging same-sex 'marriage' not discrimination, asserts archdiocese

Mexico City, Mexico, Feb 2, 2010 / 22:53 pm

In an editorial published yesterday, the news agency for the Archdiocese of Mexico City emphasized that the decision by the country’s attorney general to challenge the legalization of same-sex “marriage” does not constitute discrimination.  The paper added that homosexuals cannot “bestow rights upon themselves,” such as adoption because it violates the rights of children.

The editorial expressed full support for the attorney general’s arguments in his challenge to the Mexico City law allowing same-sex couples to marry and adopt children. The attorney general will appeal the law to the Supreme Court, arguing that it violates Mexico's constitution on two levels. 

First, the norm on civil unions enacted in 2006 in Mexico City is a departure from the constitutional protection of the family established in 1974.   Also, the editorial continued, children have the right to be part of the family as it is understood in the Mexican constitution.

The attorney general is on target with his arguments, the editorial stated, as there is no discrimination against same-sex couples entering into civil unions  Such individuals cannot bestow rights upon themselves that violate the rights of children.

These arguments are not “religious, but rather legal.  This is not about agreements with the Catholic Church, but with legality.  This is not about imposing an ideology but about reasoning with common sense and in accord with natural and ethical principles of humanity and social harmony.”

“Marriage and the family are not questions of the Church. They have always existed, centuries before the Church. The defense of the rights of children should not be up for discussion.” the editorial said.

It would be helpful, the article continued, if analysts and the media did not portray this as a confrontation between the secular state and the Church or religious values, let alone as an attempt by the Church to intervene and “impose her medieval dogmas, endangering the secular state.”

“The Church’s intervention in these matters is not an attempt to impose her religious dogma, but rather it is the expression of her convictions in relation to human coexistence, ethics and morality.”

“We cannot overlook either the meaning of marriage and the family or the respect for children,” the editorial concluded.