Vatican Statement Supports Discrimination Against Gays

The Vatican has declared its support for discrimination against gay people in such areas as public housing, family health benefits and the hiring of teachers, coaches and military personnel.

In a statement sent last month to U.S. Catholic bishops, the Vatican described homosexuality as “an objective disorder” and compared it to mental illness. It said government should deny certain privileges to gay people to promote the traditional family and protect society.

“There are areas in which it is not unjust discrimination to take sexual orientation into account,” it said. “For example, in the consignment of children to adoption or foster care, in employment of teachers or coaches, and in military recruitment.”

The statement, designed to counter gay-rights initiatives such as the District of Columbia’s domestic partners law, said Catholic authorities should not confine their views to Catholic issues or institutions. “The church has the responsibility to promote the public morality of the entire civil society on the basis of fundamental moral values,” it said.

Catholic officials said the document was compiled from several earlier papers by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. It was leaked to the media this week by New Ways Ministry, a national organization that works with gay Catholics. New Ways leaders blasted the Vatican’s arguments as “based on several crucial misconceptions, unfounded assumptions and unproven claims.”

The Vatican had no immediate comment on the leak.

John Gallagher, theological consultant to New Ways, called the pronouncement “unadulterated homophobia.” The Vatican is dredging up “all the hard-core myths about gays and lesbians, playing to everyone’s fears,” he said.

A Gallup Poll last spring showed the percentage of U.S. Catholics who favor equal job opportunities for gay people has risen from 58% in 1978 to 78% in 1992.

Many U.S. bishops have been more conciliatory toward gay people than is the Vatican’s statement. In a letter to their parishioners last year, the U.S. bishops said, “We call on all Christians and citizens of goodwill to confront their own fears about homosexuality and to curb the humor and discrimination that offend homosexual persons.”

Homosexual activity is wrong, the bishops said, but “such an orientation in itself, because not freely chosen, is not sinful.”