Apologies to those still enjoying their breakfast. News like this is sure to ruin one’s day.
Pope Benedict XVI said on Monday that gay marriage was one of several threats to the traditional family that undermined “the future of humanity itself”.
The pope made some of his strongest comments against gay marriage in a new year address to the diplomatic corps accredited to the Vatican in which he touched on some economic and social issues facing the world today.
He told diplomats from nearly 180 countries that the education of children needed proper “settings” and that “pride of place goes to the family, based on the marriage of a man and a woman.”
“This is not a simple social convention, but rather the fundamental cell of every society. Consequently, policies which undermine the family threaten human dignity and the future of humanity itself,” he said.
The traditional family the Pope was referring to is likely a nuclear family (i.e., mother, father and children), which is a rather modern concept and, until recently, was not the standard family unit recognized in Western societies. It’s not as traditional as people might think. Extended families are much more common in most of human history, and even now is still adapted in many cultures.
How families are composed have evolved throughout history because of changes in how human civilizations lived. Gay marriage, rather than a threat to the future of families, merely adds a new dimension to the already varied types of families existing today.
Research has already shown that being raised by gay parents is no worse than straight parents and may actually be better than being raised by a single parent. So what is this threat to human dignity the Pope is talking about?
There doesn’t seem to be any argument to gay marriage that amounts to more than “because we’ve never had it before”. If humans consistently stopped themselves from trying out things they never did before, we would still be living in caves.
War is a threat to the future of humanity. So are untreatable diseases, destruction of the environment, and overpopulation. But gay marriage? Methinks the Pope needs another strong gust of wind. I doubt that will make him change his mind, but it will still cheer me up immensely.
Pope Benedict XVI: Gay Marriage A Threat To ‘Future Of Humanity’