The letter by Dr Anna Maria Laurenti (The Sunday Times, July 3) cannot be ignored. She has the right to declare her sexual orientation publicly and still expect our respect. This should be so obvious that there is no need for this sentence to be written.

It is a sin, and a shameful one at that, to discriminate against someone because of sexual orientation of the individual concerned. Every human, independently of that person's sexual orientation, is endowed with a profound dignity that cannot be ignored or trespassed against.

But when gay groups lobby for laws equating gay relationships with marriage they are embarking on a grave attack against the family. The reasons to reject such legislation are not against homosexuals, who insofar as human beings have the same rights as the rest of people.

What we wish to do is to defend the anthropological and social reality of the union of man and woman, in its specificity and in its irreplaceable value for the common good. Heterosexual marriage provides society with values that cannot be substituted by anything else: personal fulfilment of two people, together with the procreation and education of children.

The Vatican has called recent government measures in Spain and Canada legalising same-sex marriage "new, violent attacks against the family". The Vatican's newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, said the moves were "violent attacks aimed at the natural family - based on a union between a man and a woman".

Spain's Parliament approved a bill on June 30 to allow same-sex couples to marry and adopt children; Canada's Parliament approved legislation legalising same-sex marriage two days earlier.

The June 30-July 1 edition of the Vatican newspaper said the heavily debated government proposals equating same-sex unions with marriage between a man and a woman were objectionable.

The laws passed in Canada and Spain are expected to come into effect this month. The Netherlands and Belgium passed similar laws allowing gay marriages in 2001 and 2003, respectively. Only Spain, however, allows for the adoption of children by married gay couples.

Catholic bishops in various parts of the world have publicly expressed concern in the wake of Spain's legalisation of homosexual marriage and warned about its effects. Cardinal Renato Martino, president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, warned that the new law is "an aberration of the principles that derive from nature" and stressed that the decision "does not reflect the true will of the Spanish people", the Italian newspaper Avvenire reported.

Cardinal Juan Luis Cipriani Thorne, Archbishop of Lima and Primate of Peru, warned of a dictatorship of moral relativism.

"Evil is disguised as good and is imposed," he said, "and woe to the one who doesn't accept it as he is labelled 'intolerant'.

"I say all this because we have just learned that... (a) country of an enormous Christian tradition has approved pseudo-marriage and imposed on society a disfigurement, that is, a most pharisaic, hypocritical attack," Cardinal Cipriani said during a Mass.

Meanwhile, the passage of a bill making Canada the latest country allowing gays to marry drew a swift rebuke from the Canadian bishops. Archbishop Brendan O'Brien of St John's, Newfoundland, president of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, said passage of the bill meant Canadians were "witnessing a dangerous deterioration of their communal values". That deterioration is evident, he said, in the high rates of divorce and abortion, and in declining birthrates.

Canada had taken "another unfortunate step towards eliminating civil and social recognition and appreciation for the unique importance of the committed relationship of a man and a woman in marriage", Archbishop O'Brien said in a statement.

Commenting on his contemporary culture St Paul said that there were many boasting of things that they should be ashamed of. It seems that our generation is following in those steps.

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