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The Vatican has come out against a United Nations resolution that calls on all governments to decriminalize homosexuality.The resolution, Archbishop Celestino Migliore said, would "add new categories of those protected from discrimination" and could lead to the decline of heterosexual marriage.
"If adopted, they would create new and implacable discriminations," Migliore said.
"For example, states which do not recognize same-sex unions as 'matrimony' will be pilloried and made an object of pressure."
France will propose the resolution this month on behalf of the 27-member European Union. The Vatican is not a member, but it uses the Euro.
"No other religion in the world is granted this type of status on the world stage," Catholics for Choice president Jon O'Brien told Advocate.com on Tuesday.
The Vatican has a nonvoting seat at the U.N., but the Holy See's opinions can be influential.
"Other major religions are granted a voice in the United Nations," O'Brien said, "but they're often treated as nongovernment organizations."
While more nations, especially those in Latin America, are moving toward separating church and state, the Vatican's stance may prompt other leaders from other religions to pressure political officials. Still, Catholicism is the only major religion with a mouthpiece at the U.N.
"You won't find an imam sitting at the U.N. pretending that they're a part of a state," O'Brien added.
"You don't find that kind of manifestation in other world religions. We certainly have seen folks like the Mormons and those of extreme Muslim beliefs and überconservatives backed by the Vatican trying to form a lobby together."
Italian newspaper La Stampa said the city-state's stance was "grotesque," figuring that the Vatican feared a chain reaction in legally instituting marriage equality, especially in Italy, where there is no law banning same-sex marriage.
"The French resolution... has nothing to do with gay marriage. It is about stopping jail and the death penalty for homosexuals," Franco Grillini, president of Italy's leading gay rights activist organization Arcigay, told Reuters.
Homosexuality is still punishable in at least 85 countries, including Afghanistan, Iran, Sudan, and Ghana. Some countries kill those who are found guilty of such an offense.
All the European Union member nations have backed France's proposed resolution. Just this past weekend, the Catholic Church in England and Wales urged priests and churchgoers to be tolerant and welcoming to LGBT people in a new pamphlet being distributed across the country.
"The laudable change of tone is undermined by the homophobic content of the Catholic catechism and by the pope's frequent endorsement of legal discrimination against lesbian and gay people," U.K. gay rights advocate Peter Tatchell said in a statement on Monday.
"The Vatican's policy of denouncing loving, stable same-sex relationships risks undoing the good, kind intentions of this leaflet."
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(Source: GWC)