As promised in an earlier Blog post – The Revolution Of Family - A Response (Part I) – here is another extract from
the Vatican document: “Considerations Regarding Proposals To Give Legal Recognition To Unions Between Homosexual Persons”.
I am posting these as part of my response to
a shameful editorial in the most recent edition of The Southern Cross.
This particular extract is from part III of this
document, paragraphs 6 to 9.
ARGUMENTS FROM REASON AGAINST LEGAL RECOGNITION OF HOMOSEXUAL UNIONS
To understand why it is necessary to oppose legal recognition of
homosexual unions, ethical considerations of different orders need to be taken
into consideration.
From the order of right reason
The scope of the civil law is certainly more limited than that of
the moral law, but civil law cannot contradict right reason without losing its
binding force on conscience. Every humanly-created law is legitimate insofar as
it is consistent with the natural moral law, recognized by right reason, and
insofar as it respects the inalienable rights of every person. Laws in favour
of homosexual unions are contrary to right reason because they confer legal
guarantees, analogous to those granted to marriage, to unions between persons
of the same sex. Given the values at stake in this question, the State could
not grant legal standing to such unions without failing in its duty to promote
and defend marriage as an institution essential to the common good.
It might be asked how a law can be contrary to the common good if it
does not impose any particular kind of behaviour, but simply gives legal
recognition to a de facto reality, which does not seem to cause injustice to
anyone. In this area, one needs first to reflect on the difference between
homosexual behaviour as a private phenomenon and the same behaviour as a
relationship in society, foreseen and approved by the law, to the point where
it becomes one of the institutions in the legal structure. This second
phenomenon is not only more serious, but also assumes a more wide-reaching and
profound influence, and would result in changes to the entire organization of
society, contrary to the common good. Civil laws are structuring principles of
man's life in society, for good or for ill. They “play a very important and
sometimes decisive role in influencing patterns of thought and behaviour”.
Lifestyles and the underlying presuppositions these express not only externally
shape the life of society, but also tend to modify the younger generation's
perception and evaluation of forms of behaviour. Legal recognition of
homosexual unions would obscure certain basic moral values and cause a
devaluation of the institution of marriage.
From the biological and anthropological order
Homosexual unions are totally lacking in the biological and
anthropological elements of marriage and family, which would be the basis, on
the level of reason, for granting them legal recognition. Such unions are not
able to contribute in a proper way to the procreation and survival of the human
race. The possibility of using recently discovered methods of artificial
reproduction, beyond involving a grave lack of respect for human dignity, does
nothing to alter this inadequacy.
Homosexual unions are also totally lacking in the conjugal
dimension, which represents the human and ordered form of sexuality. Sexual
relations are human when and insofar as they express and promote the mutual
assistance of the sexes in marriage and are open to the transmission of new
life.
As experience has shown, the absence of sexual complementarity in
these unions creates obstacles in the normal development of children who would
be placed in the care of such persons. They would be deprived of the experience
of either fatherhood or motherhood. Allowing children to be adopted by persons
living in such unions would actually mean doing violence to these children, in
the sense that their condition of dependency would be used to place them in an
environment that is not conducive to their full human development. This is
gravely immoral and in open contradiction to the principle, recognized also in
the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, that the best
interests of the child, as the weaker and more vulnerable party, are to be the
paramount consideration in every case.
From the social order
Society owes its continued survival to the family, founded on
marriage. The inevitable consequence of legal recognition of homosexual unions
would be the redefinition of marriage, which would become, in its legal status,
an institution devoid of essential reference to factors linked to
heterosexuality; for example, procreation and raising children. If, from the
legal standpoint, marriage between a man and a woman were to be considered just
one possible form of marriage, the concept of marriage would undergo a radical
transformation, with grave detriment to the common good. By putting homosexual
unions on a legal plane analogous to that of marriage and the family, the State
acts arbitrarily and in contradiction with its duties.
The principles of respect and non-discrimination cannot be invoked
to support legal recognition of homosexual unions. Differentiating between
persons or refusing social recognition or benefits is unacceptable only when it
is contrary to justice. The denial of the social and legal status of marriage
to forms of cohabitation that are not and cannot be marital is not opposed to
justice; on the contrary, justice requires it.
Nor can the principle of the proper autonomy of the individual be
reasonably invoked. It is one thing to maintain that individual citizens may
freely engage in those activities that interest them and that this falls within
the common civil right to freedom; it is something quite different to hold that
activities which do not represent a significant or positive contribution to the
development of the human person in society can receive specific and categorical
legal recognition by the State. Not even in a remote analogous sense do
homosexual unions fulfil the purpose for which marriage and family deserve
specific categorical recognition. On the contrary, there are good reasons for
holding that such unions are harmful to the proper development of human society,
especially if their impact on society were to increase.
From the legal order
Because married couples ensure the succession of generations and are
therefore eminently within the public interest, civil law grants them
institutional recognition. Homosexual unions, on the other hand, do not need
specific attention from the legal standpoint since they do not exercise this
function for the common good.
Nor is the argument valid according to which legal recognition of
homosexual unions is necessary to avoid situations in which cohabiting
homosexual persons, simply because they live together, might be deprived of
real recognition of their rights as persons and citizens. In reality, they can
always make use of the provisions of law – like all citizens from the
standpoint of their private autonomy – to protect their rights in matters of
common interest. It would be gravely unjust to sacrifice the common good and
just laws on the family in order to protect personal goods that can and must be
guaranteed in ways that do not harm the body of society.
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