Legal status for gay couples 'superfluous': Italian bishops

AFP
Legal status for gay couples 'superfluous': Italian bishops
Tue Jan 30, 2:17 PM ET

Granting legal status to unmarried couples, gay or heterosexual, would be "superfluous" as well as a threat to traditional marriage, Italian bishops said as the government prepared a draft bill on the issue.

"The rights of heterosexual persons living under the same roof can be protected through civil jurisprudence," the Italian Bishops Conference said in a statement, urging greater political support for "the legitimate family founded on marriage."

"A law on de facto couples is superfluous," the secretary of the Bishops Conference, Giuseppe Betori, told a news conference at the offices of Vatican Radio.

Prime Minister Romano Prodi's center-left Union coalition promised in its election manifesto last year to grant legal recognition to common law partnerships, a plan approved reluctantly by centrist Catholics within the alliance.

The government is apparently having difficulty reaching consensus on the draft bill, whose unveiling was promised by the end of January.

Justice Minister Clemente Mastella has already said he will vote against the bill, which is expected to grant inheritance rights, joint medical insurance and visiting rights in prisons and hospitals, among other entitlements, to unmarried couples.

In order to satisfy all components of Prodi's wide-ranging coalition, which also includes hardline radicals, communists and greens, the new legislation will result in far less robust civil unions than those that exist elsewhere in Europe.

In their statement, the bishops rejected accusations of "interference" levelled against the Roman Catholic Church and the Vatican reasserted their right "to intervene to defend the great values that are first of all human, as well as Christian."

According to a poll published last week, two in three Italians say they are in favor of legal status for gay couples.

The Eurispes poll also found that 58 percent opposed homosexual marriage, while 34 percent said they supported it.

Italian President Giorgio Napolitano said Monday he thought it was still "possible to find a synthesis through dialogue with the Church and taking into account the concerns of the pontiff."

But Betori told Tuesday's news conference: "A synthesis is not a compromise. ... The Catholic Church cannot renounce its principles."

Recognising civil unions between gay couples would blur "the important distinction between the masculinity or femininity of the human person," the bishops' statement said.


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