Tag Archives: same – sex unions

CATHOLIC LGBT HISTORY: DignityUSA Issues Guidelines for Holy Unions – Bondings 2.0

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DignityUSA Issues Guidelines for Holy Unions

It has been two years since marriage equality became the law of the land in the U.S., but it has been twenty years since an LGBT Catholic organization here in the U.S. issued their own guidelines for same-sex marriage, way ahead of the general population.

In August 1997,  The Washington Blade, the LGBT weekly newspaper of the District of Columbia metropolitan area, wrote an article about DignityUSA releasing a new set of guidelines for lesbian and gay couples preparing for a marriage ritual referred to as a Holy Union (which at the time would not have been a legally binding ceremony).  The news article explains:

“At its national convention last week, Dignity released its guidelines for the holy union of same-sex couples.  The guidelines, which also include a registry of couples that have joined in a ho9ly union, stemmed from a two-year research effort.”

Full report– Bondings 2.0

Synod Father Supports Blessings for Gay Couples

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German synod father says Church could give ‘private blessings’ to same-sex unions – CatholicHerald

Bishop Bode says the Church could do more to support people in stable unions

One of the three German bishops who will attend next month’s Synod of Bishops on the Family has proposed that the Catholic Church might offer “private blessings” to same-sex couples.Bishop Franz-Josef Bode of Osnabruck said it was possible to see strengths as well as weaknesses in both gay relationships and in those of cohabiting heterosexuals.He said that the Catholic Church could not accept gay marriage because it understood marriage as a union between a husband and a wife that was open to the procreation of children.But the bishop said that since the Church was bound not to discriminate against homosexuals by the Catechism of the Catholic Church it should do more to support those who were in stable unions.

Source: CatholicHerald.co.uk » German synod father says Church could give ‘private blessings’ to same-sex unions

The Italian town where gay couples can’t marry but can die together

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The Vimercate town assembly voted to change the local rules so gay couples can apply to have adjacent graves but the local Catholic priest isn’t happy

12 JUNE 2013 | BY DANIELE GUIDO GESSA

Gay couples can’t be married in Italy but one town in the north of the country has decided they can, at least, be buried together.

Vimercate, a town in the Lombardy region, changed the rules yesterday (11 June) so gay and lesbian couples now have the right to apply to have adjacent graves in the local cemetery when they die.

The industrial town of 25,000 inhabitants, near Milan, split on the issue, with a part of the assembly – led by left-wing parties – voting against the new local law.

Even the local Catholic priest, don Mirko Bellora, opposed the move. He said: ‘I hope this local law is going to be changed again.’

Nina Laino, who is in charge of the families’ register in Vimercate, told Gay Star News: ‘We have changed the cemeteries’ rules. They will be fully operative from next Saturday [15 June].

‘No same-sex couples have applied to be buried together yet, but we decided to set up new rules for the future.’

A local councillor led a campaign against the new law. And the local left-wing Partito Democratico (PD) split as well.

Laino added: ‘It has been very simple, we only had to change some words in the local rules. We wrote “partner” instead of “husband” and “wife”, it was not such a big effort.’

But the Vimercate’s council is working also on giving more rights to gay couples, though they will stop short of a gay partner’s register.

Laino said: ‘We are not going to introduce a Registro delle unioni civili, like that in Milan and in other Italian cities.

‘We won’t have an official register of the same-sex couples, but we are going to guarantee local welfare and benefits to gay couples as well.’

– continue reading at Gay Star News.

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“Records Show Pope Francis Supported Gay Unions”

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Sometimes the media misses the elephant in the room, and this is clearly one of those occasions.

Buried within several news reports is the stunning revelation that Pope Francis, then Jesuit Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, may have quietly backed gay civil unions as an alternative to the gay marriage law that passed in Argentina in July 2010.

From NBCLatino.com

According to the new pope’s authorized biographer, Sergio Rubin, Bergoglio was politically wise enough to know the church couldn’t win a straight-on fight against gay marriage, so he urged his bishops to lobby for gay civil unions instead. It wasn’t until his proposal was shot down by the bishops’ conference that he publicly declared what Paulon described as the “war of God” — and the church lost the issue altogether.

Despite his conservatism, “Bergoglio is known for being moderate and finding a balance between reactionary and progressive sectors,” Paulon said. “When he came out strongly against gay marriage, he did it under pressure from the conservatives.”

…

Freyre, executive director of the Buenos Aires AIDS Foundation, wrote on his Twitter account this week that Pope Francis “knows that gay marriage isn’t the end of the world or the species.”

In addition, BuzzFeed reports:

When it became clear that stopping the marriage law would be impossible, the church may have tacitly given its backing to a civil union law as a way to head off the marriage bill. Senator Liliana Negre de Alonso, a member of Opus Dei and one of the politicians most closely linked to the Catholic Church, sponsored the civil union bill. (This would be like Rick Santorum having endorsed a civil union law in the United States.) It went nowhere. During the debate, the leader of the majority party reduced her to tears while calling her a “Nazi” for backing legislation that would create a “separate-but-equal” status for same-sex couples.

– continue reading at  Millennial.

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On Gay Unions, a Pragmatist Before He Was a Pope (New York Times)

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Pontifical Council for the Family Head: “Vatican Should Do More To Support Gay Couples”

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A high-ranking Vatican official on Monday (Feb. 4) voiced support for giving unmarried couples some kind of legal protection even as he reaffirmed the Catholic Church’s opposition to same-sex marriage.

 

Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia

Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia

Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, head of the Pontifical Council for the Family, also said the church should do more to protect gays and lesbians from discrimination in countries where homosexuality is illegal.

In his first Vatican press conference since his appointment as the Catholic Church’s “minister” for family, Paglia conceded that there are several kinds of “cohabitation forms that do not constitute a family,” and that their number is growing.

Paglia suggested that nations could find “private law solutions” to help individuals who live in non-matrimonial relations, “to prevent injustice and make their life easier.”

Nevertheless, Paglia was adamant in reaffirming society’s duty to preserve the unique value of marriage.

“The church must defend the truth, and the truth is that a marriage is only between a man and a woman,” he said. Other kinds of “affections” cannot be the foundation for a “public structure” such as marriage.

“We cannot surrender to a sick egalitarianism that abolishes every difference,” he warned, and run the risk of society becoming a new “Babel.”

France is in the process of legalizing same-sex marriage despite fierce opposition from the Catholic Church; a similar fight is brewing in Britain with the Anglican and Roman Catholic churches sharply opposed to the move.

In a September 2012 document on gay marriage, French bishops recognized the value of France’s current civil unions law, which grants heterosexual and homosexual couples some benefits, such as tax breaks.

In November, voters approved gay marriage in Maine, Maryland and Washington state, and the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments this spring over federal and state bans on gay marriage.

Responding to journalists’ questions, Paglia also strongly condemned discrimination against gay people, who he said “have the same dignity as all of God’s children.”

“In the world there are 20 or 25 countries where homosexuality is a crime,” he said. “I would like the church to fight against all this.”

– Huffington Post 

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