Undermining marriage and family

The Civil Partnerships Act, which became law in Britain last Monday, is the legalisation of same-sex marriage in all but name. The strong stand taken by the English bishops was more than deserved.

Under the new law, gay partners will not be considered married but will benefit from the few remaining tax breaks of marriage. For instance, partners will not be required to pay inheritance tax on an estate left to them when the other dies. Gays will also be able to claim their partner's pension rights, inherit the tenancy of a rented home and register the death of their partner. They will use a divorce process if they break up. Only those involved in sexual relationships will be permitted to register their partnerships.

Archbishop Peter Smith of Cardiff, Wales, and chairman of the Department of Christian Responsibility and Citizenship of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales, said that the Civil Partnerships Act, created a "real danger that the deeply rooted understanding of marriage as a permanent and exclusive relationship between a woman and a man, and as the best context for raising children, will be eroded."

He said the new law was "not based on natural complementarities of male and female, and the natural purpose of sexual union cannot be achieved by same-sex partnerships, nor can a same-sex couple co-operate with God to create new life." Marriage was always a privileged institution because husbands and wives bore the responsibility of procreating and educating children on behalf of society, said the archbishop.

"Marriage is recognised to be the most stable and loving context for raising children," he said. "For these reasons, it has had and should continue to have a special position in our social and legislative frameworks. Its value to society should be promoted and never diminished."

Closer to home but on a similar subject L'Osservatore Romano last Wednesday renewed its criticism of domestic-partnership legislation in Italy, saying that the proposal is a bid to "dismantle God's plan for the family".

The Vatican paper was commenting on proposals put forward during the campaign leading up to parliamentary elections that will take place in the spring of 2006. The proposal offers legal recognition to "different forms of common life" that could include same-sex partnerships.

L'Osservatore Romano notes that the leftist coalition has not specified "the characteristic traits" that define that "common life" to be recognised. That omission seems deliberate, the Vatican paper observes; the political leadership wishes to obscure the essential nature of family life.

Romano Prodi, a practising Catholic and one of the leaders of the Left, denied that a domestic-partnership policy would change the understanding of the family, and insisted that in allowing unmarried couples to register their relationships, the law would not open the way to same-sex marriage. It would be, he said, simply a way to "regularise situations in which hundreds of thousands of people would otherwise suffer."

L'Osservatore insists that Italy must reject "false conceptions of marriage and the family that do not respect God's original plan". The Vatican newspaper has stated its editorial opposition to domestic partnerships and civil unions repeatedly since September. While these editorials have prompted leftist complaints that the Church is "interfering" in secular politics, neither Vatican officials nor Italian bishops have backed off their statements.

Cardinal Camillo Ruini, in a September address to the Italian bishops' conference (of which he is president), announced that the Church would not be silent on moral issues under discussion in the public forum.